Following on from his hugely successful book Rising Sun, Falling
Skies, Jeffrey R. Cox tells the gripping story of the first Allied
offensive of the Pacific War, as they sought to prevent Japan from
cutting off Australia and regaining dominance in the Pacific.
Following the disastrous Java Sea campaign, the Allies went on the
offensive in the Pacific in a desperate attempt to halt the Japanese
forces that were rampaging across the region. With the conquest of
Australia a very real possibility, the stakes were high. Their target:
the Japanese-held Solomon Islands, in particular the southern island of
Guadalcanal.
Hamstrung by arcane prewar thinking and a bureaucratic mindset, the US
Navy had to adapt on the fly in order to compete with the mighty
Imperial Japanese Navy, whose ingenuity and creativity thus far had
fostered the creation of its Pacific empire. Starting with the
amphibious assault on Savo Island, the campaign turned into an
attritional struggle where the evenly matched foes sought to grind out a
victory.