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Book Review of Pacific Payback: The Carrier Aviators Who Avenged Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway

Pacific Payback: The Carrier Aviators Who Avenged Pearl Harbor at the Battle of Midway
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If you are well read on the war in the Pacific during World War II, you know the torpedo squadrons took massive casualties when they went after the Japanese carriers at Midway. But they brought the Japanese air cover down to sea level. When the American dive bombers came in overhead, the sky was clear.

The American dive bombers took out three Japanese carriers in five minutes, and then another one later that day.

But the price was still high, as many dive bomber and fighter crews were lost. Of the approximately 220 planes the three American carriers carried, almost half were lost, most with their crews. If they went into the sea, many initially survived but were never found. Some who were found by the Japanese, suffered a callous death. And two air crew members spent three years in Japanese POW camps.

This book is almost a minute-by-minute account the battle. It deserves to be read to understand how that American generation fought and died for our country.