Without the aircraft carrier, the Japanese would not have brought the
United States into the Second World War through their attack on Pearl
Harbour; without the carrier, the United States could not have rolled
back the Japanese forces spread across the wide reaches of the Pacific
and carried the war to Japan itself. Thus is can be argued that aircraft
carriers were the decisive naval weapons system of the Second World War.
Yet they had an uncertain start, with HMS Courageous sunk two weeks
after the outbreak of war, followed by her sister, Glorious the
following spring.
This book is an authoritative, concise and hugely readable account of
carrier operations throughout WW2. The text is given immediacy by the
use of eyewitness accounts.