Customer Reviews

Zero: The Story of Japan's Air War in the Pacific - As Seen by the Enemy

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This book covers the early succeses of the Japanes Navy from the early years in China to the fall of the empire and the decline of the zero fighter against the newer American aircraft. It is a detailed and interesting insight into the Navys dependence on air cover in all their land based and carrier operations in world war two. I found this book well written and very detailed. This is not a story to be read like a novel but as a student of Japanese operations in the second worl war.

Although a must-read in any WW2 military aviation library, the book is perhaps a little disappointment in it's blandness , he spends a large part of the book simply re-telling the general history of the Pacific War...the only difference between that part of the book and many other such histories is that the "we" and "us" is of course in this case the Japanese. The main expectation and where the book disappoints is I would have expected a lot more deeper revelation of technical operational issues and anecdotes of the Japanese aviators in the war.....he begins to do this during the Solomons campaign portion of the book, where he devotes a page or so to such issues as comparing the efforts on sanitation and mosquito eradication around Japanese installations with those of the US tropical forces, and the implications for the general health of the Japanese Pacific forces...likewise he makes the basic comparison points also on the important issue of the relatively poor efficiency and makeshift capability of Japanese engineers in airfield construction compared to the much more professional can-do US Seabee type engineers service-this is all great stuff, but I feel we needed more of such discussion and less re-telling of the basic war history which the serious reader tends to pretty much be familiar with.

Two interesting portions of the book where he does go more in the direction again that I was hoping for:
1. there is a superb telling using the the diaries of vice-admiral Ugaki, of the shooting-down and death of the legendary Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto's transport bomber in the Solomons in 1943. Ugaki was one of the few survivors riding in a second transport accompanying Yamamoto's own "Betty" bomber. This is a white-knuckle flying account, you feel each turn of the frantically evading Japanese planes and the rattle of of each burst from the pursuing US P38s who basically put a well-timed and flown flying "hit" on Yamamoto. Arguably worth getting the book for this chapter alone, the build-up to this episode is also told in good detail.
2. there is an interesting basic account of the late losing struggle of the Japanese defenders against both B29 raiders and then carrier-borne US aircraft marauding at will over Japanin late 1944-45.Mention is made of such interesting lesser known Japanese aircraft as Raiden/ Jack , Shiden /George and Nick twin-engined night-fighters, this goes in the right direction, but once more, this chapter could have simply tarried and delved a little deeper for the more experienced reader.

In a similiar way Okumiya tells of his personal recollections of the 1942 epic Doolittle B25 raid from the Japanese viewpoint,the impact of this very small air raid on the Japanese public psychologically, and the implications of this small raid on the Japanese strategy and war plans at the time.

A must-read certainly, but Japanese figures of the stature and experience of Okumiya and designer Horikoshi could have lifted the lid off a little further and taken us deeper into Japan's flying war....there are still parts of the story you feel are untold by such men best equiped to tell it in the way it has been told by British and German authors.

In Zero!, Martin Caidin has brought amazing insight from a perspective otherwise(at least previous to 1956)seldom heard within American historical literature. Zero! recalls from two first-hand sources, the development of Japanese aviation from the Sino-Japanese War to Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
The contributions of Japanese wartime senior flying officer Masatake Okumiya brilliantly and in typical Japanese style, artistically reveals the triumphant rise and embarrassing fall of Japanese air superiority in WWII. Okumiya's contemporary accounts of some of the war's most savage air campaigns are unbelievable. As one reads Okumiya's stories, you can feel the pain of defeat mounting as American technological, economical, and military superiority develop throughout the Pacific Campaign. Okumiya's brilliant insight is a frank assessment of Japan's futile attempt at a war it could not pursue beyond several months. Further, is Okumiya's conclusion of the terrible price paid by Japan with the atomic bombs. But this comes with his belief that had these weapons not been employed, a much higher price would be paid by both sides.
Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who created the Zero has also given his thoughts of the war and the chaos it brought to the Japanese home islands. His observations are equally frank, and critical of the Japanese political system in place before and during the war.
The stories often go forward and back with some repetition, this is common in translated works, but in this case provides a more complete picture of events as they unfold.
Anyone who questions the American use of atomic weapons against Japan should read the comments written by both these men who agree, as Caidin concludes in his preface, "gave the Japanese... an excuse and means of ending a futile war with honor intact."
If you enjoy works by current authors like Donald Goldstein, or historians like the late Katherine Dillon or Gordon Prange and you haven't read this yet, do yourself the favor of reading Zero! THEN REVIEW IT! REVIEW EVERY BOOK YOU READ, AUTHORS DESERVE YOUR OPINIONS!

This is the true story of a Zero pilot who started flying combat in 1937 and continued until he was shot down by an F6F in 1944 at Rabaul. It is excellent. His encounters with our combat aircraft are dramatic. He leads a suicide mission from Iwo Jima to find our task force. We had just left the Bonins after a raid and we were covered by a rain storm.

Alex Thomas