Winner of the 2011 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature,
The Twilight Warriors is the engrossing, page-turning saga of a
tightly knit band of naval aviators who are thrust into the final--and
most brutal--battle of the Pacific war during World War II: Okinawa.
April 1945. The end of World War II finally appears to be nearing. The
Third Reich is collapsing in Europe, and the Americans are overpowering
the once-mighty Japanese Empire in the Pacific. For a group of young
pilots trained in the twilight of the war, their greatest worry is that
it will end before they have a chance to face the enemy.
They call themselves Tail End Charlies: They fly at the tail end of
formations, stand at the tail end of chow lines, and now they are
catching the tail end of the war. What they don't know is that they will
be key players in the bloodiest and most difficult of naval battles--not
only of World War II but in all of American history.
The Twilight Warriors relives the drama of the world's last great
naval campaign. From the cockpit of a Corsair fighter we gaze down at
the Japanese task force racing to destroy the American amphibious force
at Okinawa. Through the eyes of the men on the destroyers assigned to
picket ship duty, we experience the terror as wave after wave of
kamikazes crash into their ships. Standing on the deck of the legendary
superbattleship Yamato, we watch Japan's last hope for victory die in
a tableau of gunfire and explosions.
The fate of the Americans at Okinawa, including a twenty-two-year-old
former art student, an intrepid fighter pilot whose life abruptly
changes when his Corsair goes down off the enemy shore, and a young
Texan lieutenant who volunteers for the most dangerous flying job in the
fleet--intercepting kamikazes at night over the blackened Pacific--is
intertwined with the lives of the "young gods" the honor-bound kamikaes
forces who swarm like killer bees toward the U.S. ships.
The ferocity of the Okinawa fighting stuns the world. Before it ends,
the long battle will cost more American lives, ships, and aircraft than
any naval engagement in U.S. history. More than simply the account of a
historic battle, The Twilight Warriors brings to life the human side
of an epic conflict. It is the story of young Americans at war in the
air and on the sea--and of their enigmatic, fanatically courageous
enemy.
