Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Having read several books recently by the American admirals who fought the Japanese in WWII, I was curious if the British Navy was more involved than I knew. This book was the only one to come up in a search and I was excited to finally learn what the Royal Navy's role in the Pacific was. Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed to read the author whining about how no one knew what a great job they did and then he spent over 200 of the 250 pages detailing the Royal Navy's exploits in the Indian Ocean and East Indies. The last time I checked that's not in the Pacific. It seems that with rare exceptions once the Japanese captured Hong Kong and Singapore in early 1942 the RN didn't get back into the Pacific until January 1945. So I wasn't mistaken in their limited role. It was interesting to read about their participation in the Okinawa campaign and sorties against the Japanese Islands as I hadn't known that. The Royal Australian and New Zealand Navies have a proud and more well known history of fighting in the Pacific - it was their backyard afterall. Gray seemed to equate the RAN and RNZN with being British. I don't think they would agree with that! It seemed rather hypocritical I thought to complain that the RN got a raw deal in history's recollection but then say that he won't be talking much about the RAN or RNZN exploits even tho he considers them British for his purposes.
It was nice to actually see some maps (albeit very general) in a book like this, although with all the detailed information provided it would have been nice to be able to "follow along" with some detailed maps.
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