A highly illustrated study of the last great campaign in the Pacific
Theater of World War II: the US Navy's and Royal Navy's air, surface,
and submarine attacks on the Japanese Home Islands.
The final months of Allied naval bombardments on the Home Islands during
World War II have, for whatever reason, frequently been overlooked by
historians. Yet the Allies' final naval campaign against Japan involved
the largest and arguably most successful wartime naval fleet ever
assembled, and was the climax to the greatest naval war in history.
Though suffering grievous losses during its early attacks, by July 1945
the United States Third Fleet wielded 1,400 aircraft just off the coast
of Japan, while Task Force 37, the British Pacific Fleet's carrier and
battleship striking force, was the most powerful single formation ever
assembled by the Royal Navy. In the final months of the war the Third
Fleet's 20 American and British aircraft carriers would hurl over 10,000
aerial sorties against the Home Islands, whilst another ten Allied
battleships would inflict numerous morale-destroying shellings on
Japanese coastal cities.
In this illustrated study, historian Brian Lane Herder draws on primary
sources and expert analysis to chronicle the full story of the Allies'
Navy Siege of Japan from February 1945 to the very last days of World
War II.