Customer Reviews

Red Sun Setting: The Battle of the Philippine Sea (Bluejacket Paperback Series)

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Based largely on US after-action reports and oral histories, with some reliance on Japanese sources and other accounts, "Red Sun Setting" is one of the few stand-alone accounts of the Battle of the Philippine Sea published. On the whole, Y'Blood manages to both tell the story in detail and keep a lively pace. Beginning with the development of the US decision to take the Marianas (quite a bit more convoluted than I had thought before), Y'Blood quickly moves to the actual engagement, focusing particularly on submarine and aerial action.

In fact, my only criticism of the book is that while it goes into very great detail about the aerial engagements -- and, admittedly, the battle was a clash of naval air forces -- it seems relatively light on the strategic and tactical considerations immediately before and during the battle. This applies particularly to the Japanese forces.

Thomas Buell's fine biography of Raymond Spruance, who commanded the US naval forces during the battle can help fill in the gap on the American side. I haven't read Samuel Eliot Morison's account of the battle in detail, but suspect it might present a more well-rounded view as well.

Those two accounts, however, necessarily omit a great deal of the detail and information contained in Y'Blood's account. "Red Sun Setting" is recommended to fill in a gap about the Marianas campaign that likely exists in many Pacific War libraries.

This book provides a detailed and well-written account of the Marianas Turkey Shoot. The book starts with a lead in from both sides to why the naval battle was so important. In this sense, the book provides an excellent strategic context for the battle. What is really good about the book though is the detailed accounts of each fighter group, bomber group and torpedo group during the battle - both the carrier battles and the air battles over the islands are covered in a lot of detail. For example, Lt. Isley was killed in action over the Japanese airfield that was named after him after the island was taken. Lt. Vareciu's 6 shot down enemy planes is covered, as are all units and aces. Having read a couple of books that covered this battle within a larger context, this is the best at covering the battle in its totality. Therefore, if you are interested in a book on the naval war in the Pacific, this is a great book to read.

Red Sun Setting does, as others point out, provide an abundance of factual data on the Battle of the Philippine Sea. And yes, there are few books that focus specifically on this battle - in fact, I can't think of a single one at the moment other than this one.
The only problem I had with this book is that it was too long - and by that I mean it should have ended before it did. The author goes on, after the description of the battle, to formulate conclusions and in essence point fingers; and in putting forward these conclusions he relies a great deal on hindsight. For example: Spruance should have gone west after the Japanese fleet, and left only battleships and light carriers covering the invasion fleet at Saipan. The reason? There were only 50 land-based aircraft available to the Japanese, a force that could easily have been fought off by the light carriers. Did Spruance know this? No. Did anybody? Yes, but only the Japanese commander in the Marianas. We didn't know about it until after the war. But based on this fact, Spruance was wrong in not sailing away from the Saipan invasion force.
I cannot argue with all of the author's conclusions; however, in the main they are based, either all or in part, on information available to HIM at the time of writing, decades after the battle, but NOT available to Spruance in the midst of the battle.
So, while the description of the battle, events leading up to it, and its aftermath, are all considerably well done, one cannot avoid the feeling that the author has a grudge against Spruance, and went out of his way to try and paint him in a bad light. While I have no reason to agree or disagree with the way Spruance conducted the battle, it seems clear to me that the author is strongly opinionated on the matter.

By the summer of 1944, the Japanese had been on the defensive for 2 years. They had lost the valuable island of Guadalcanal, along with the Gilberts and Marshalls. Now, the American Navy had its sights set on the Marianas islands, specifically Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. If these islands were taken, the Japanese home islands would now be in range of American B-29 bombers, which would be based out of the Marianas. Recognizing the dangers of losing these islands, the Japanese fleet sortied for the first time in well over a year. By the end of this climactic battle, Japanese air power will have been completely destroyed, and the sky way to Tokyo would be wide open.

Commanding the U.S fleet was Admiral Raymond Spruance. Hero of Midway, Spruance would be severely criticized after this battle. Spruance's main task was to guard the invasion fleet off Saipan. This he did-almost to a fault. Granted, over 350 Japanese planes were shot down in what became known as "The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" and three of Japan's carriers were sunk (two by submarines). But, the damage to the enemy could have been even greater had Spruance unleashed the full force of his fleet against the Japanese. He spent too much time in the waters around Saipan and let the crippled Japanese escape to the west. Was this battle a victory for the Americans? Absolutely, but it could have been even greater than it was.

I found the facts presented in this book to be interesting and revealing. I learned much about this battle that I didn't know previously. I had read other accounts of Spruance's reluctance to leave the waters around Saipan and pursue the fleeing Japanese, but author William T. Y'Blood goes into much greater detail than I've read before. I particularly enjoyed reading about the Turkey Shoot and the heroic exploits of the American fliers. The sinking of the Japanese carriers by the American submarines was interesting as well.

This is a good book and does a good job of describing this climactic battle between the American and Japanese navies.

William T. Y'Blood has compiled an exhaustive treatment of the Battle of the Philippine Sea. It was one of the greatest victories in U.S. Naval history.

By June of 1944, it had been over 2 years since the battle of Midway in which 3 American aircraft carriers faced 4 Japanese carriers. There were some additional carrier actions off of Guadalcanal involving fewer ships in the fall of 1942. Since that time, the Japanese refused to commit to a large scale battle while it tried to replace the grievous losses in men and material it suffered at Midway.

When the Americans made a move to capture Guam, Tinian and Saipan, the Japanese could no longer refuse battle and they sortied a huge force of 5 heavy and 3 light aircraft carriers along with 5 huge battleships, among which were the largest in the world; the Yamato and the Musashi.

However, the naval battle would be primarily an air-to-air battle of carrier-based aircraft in which the U.S. shot down over 600 Japanese planes. Admiral Spruance, in command of American forces, decided to keep his fleet close to the islands in order to protect the landings and would eventually come under some criticism for not aggressively pursuing the Japanese fleet.

American losses were about 120 planes, 80 of which resulted when planes ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea returning in the dark from a late day sortie in an attempt to attack the enemy carriers.

Red Sun Setting contains a glossary, a robust bibliography, a detailed order of battle, helpful maps and diagrams and is fully indexed. The book describes the battle in great detail and offers some after-action analysis of Spruance's decisions. It makes a wonderful companion book to those written about the sea war in the Pacific.

John E. Nevola
Author of The Last Jump - A Novel of World War II

If you want detail this book has it; maybe too much detail. I have read over 100 books about WWII so I obviously like the topic but I found myself getting bogged down in the detail here. Pilot names, longitude, latitude - if you want to plot everything that happened you could do it with this book but it just is not that exciting. There are even times where you can see the author tried to enliven the narrative but it is not enough. For contrast on how one can be historically accurate and exciting try "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" by James Hornfischer. Or Winston Groom's "1942" or even Rick Atkinson's "An Army At Dawn".