"A Microhistory of World War II: Dogfight over Tokyo" Topic

"More than sixteen million Americans served in uniform during World War II. Many of the recently published books on World War II obliquely deal with the ideal of holding the cause of the dead in trust for the living. Historians can choose to write micro or macro history and John Wukovits writes micro historical studies about various topics in the Pacific War. Wukovits has previously written about individual ships, a destroyer squadron, Marine Raiders, and the battle for Tarawa, among others.

In Dogfight over Tokyo, Wukovits ties this microhistory to the lives of the last four naval aviators to die in the Pacific War. Unfortunately, the brief lives of these four young officers are insufficient to carry the weight of an entire book and instead Wukovits presents the reader with a narrative history of Naval Air Group 88, which was assigned to USS Yorktown. He writes from the viewpoint of the young pilots of the air group, tells us about their thoughts and missions, but adds little to our understanding of the purpose of the final Allied naval air operations of the Pacific War. The result is a book produced for those seeking an intimate view of the end of this war, not an analytic history of the air group. While the book does succeed in putting a human face on these men; the most valuable portion of the book is Wukovits' summary of the way in which the air group was formed and how it trained the assigned naval aviators…"

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Amicalement
Armand

The article does not mention Wildcats (it mentions Hellcats and Corsairs for fighters/fighter bombers), so why use an image with one?

Who knows…? (smile)

Amicalement
Armand