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(More customer reviews)I was appalled when I read this book. It is shot through with inaccuracies, errors, "imagined" conversations, fabricated quotations, erroneous myths, and a lot of material that is just flat wrong. Many of the instances he relates are totally bizarre - where he got them is unknown, because the book is not footnoted, and has a bibliography of only 21 "general history"-type books, rather thin for a work of history that covers 90 years of history and four wars (but an excellent list if you consider this to be a work of creative fiction, which it mostly is).
The author is a former officer in the Army Air Corps who flew B-29s. He then became manager of public relations and manager of military publicity for two defense aviation companies. Read, "PR Flack." This is the type of book that gives PR Flacks their bad reputation. There is enough heroism in naval aviation history in truth - so why did the author just make up quotations and sugar-coat events, when there was so much good truthful material available?
In the forward, it is asserted that the book "does not rely on archival material. It is basically about the men and women who developed naval aviation through the uears and fought for it in peace and war." This evidently means that the author interviewed some folks, and did not bother to fact-check what they gave him. He inserts his own imagination to boot, when he makes the book "exciting" in a good public-relations-publicity manner by making up conversations and attributing to people qotations that they never said.
Let me give a few examples, concentrated on his tale of WW II, which is my area of expertice:
From the book: "Command headquarters at Pearl Harbor sent out an emergency dispatch to all ships at sea: 'Intercept and destroy enemy! Believed retreating on a course between Pearl and Jaluit. Intercept and destroy!" No such message was ever sent. Morrison likes to make up overheated "messages" like this to liven up the narrative. He also fabricates quotations, and attributes emotions to people. For example, at one time he asserts that during the Battle of Midway that Admiral "Fletcher was livid with anger." Totally a fabrication.
Regarding the attack on Pearl Harbor, "Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet and the First Fleet, had urged Nagumo to continue the attacks, but the cautious admiral headed for home instead." No such message was ever sent.
After Pearl Harbor, "The Oklahoma, which could have been repaired, was scrapped so its materials could be diverted to more worthwhile ships." Oklahoma sank in 1947 while under tow to California en route to being scrapped.
"On January 9, 1942, Halsey studied the latest orders from Nimitz, 'You are to raid the Southern Marshall and Northern Gilbert areas as soon as possible. The 'lifeline' must be kept open." This is a fabricated quotation not to be found in the orders.
The Japanese base at Kwajalein "had been established to strike at the American-Australian lifeline." One look at a chart explodes that fallacy.
Regarding the Battle of the Java Sea: "When the battle ended, only the American cruiser Houston and the Australian light cruiser Perth survived out of a fleet of eighteen warships." There were 14 Allied warships at Java Sea, of which 9 survived the battle.
Here's some of Morrison's "I was there" fabrications: "(Admiral) Brown peered anxiously each day into the sun where Japanese bombers often hid, waiting for the right moment to catch ships by surprise in a devastating attack. The Japanese were spotted on February 20. ... the third bomber headed away under full power. Brown watched the fleeing bomber with dismay." There are a lot of lines like this scattered about the book. How, exactly, did Brown watch the fleeing bomber when it the action was not visible from the flagship? How exactly did the author know that Admiral Brown stared into the sun each day looking for Japanese bombers, and then watched "with dismay" as one escaped in an action over the horizon from the flagship?
In an air strike on Lae-Salamaua, all the good history books, including some in Morrison's bibliography, record that the results were disappointing and that the accuracy of the bombing left much to be desired. Wilbur Morrison, never one to criticize an aviator, gets around an accurate tally of results by asserting that the targets were "smothered in bombs." Whenever Morrison doesn't know what really happened, he resorts to hyperbole.
Then he writes another phoney dispatch attributed to Fletcher at the Battle of the Coral Sea: "Attack and re-attack! Seek out the enemy. Destroy him!" No such message was ever sent. The author apparently makes these things up for dramatic effect.
At Coral Sea, the carrier Lexington "had received at least seven torpedoes and thirteen bombs from Japanese planes." The correct total is two torpedo and three bomb hits, from which she recovered and was steaming at 25 knots when a huge internal explosion from leaking gasoline tanks forced her to be abandoned.
"... MK 13 torpedo, which had to be dropped within 1,000 yards of a target ..." The range of the Mk 13 was 6,300 yards at 33.5 knots.
Morrison has no understanding of the battles over strategy that went on between MacArthur and Nimitz. At one point he makes up a briefing where: "Nimitz reminded his staff, "The chain of islands to the east of New Guinea is the logical route to return to the Philippines." This is another fabricated quotation that is flat wrong: Nimitz favored the Central Pacific route, and did not see the Philippines as the destination, but Okinawa or Formosa.
The bottom line is that this book should not have been printed. The author makes up so much that his credibility is totally destroyed. It is impossible to differentiate what is accurate and what is a fabrication.
There is a great shot of a North Vietnamese patrol boat burning on page 319. It would have been better if the entire print run of this book had been sunk along with the patrol boat.
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A complete history of the wings at sea.This is the story of naval aviation and of the men and women who fought for it through its obscure beginnings in 1910 from the Persian Gulf War and on to the present. Pilots, Man Your Planes is not a superficial account based on archival research. It is a complete history woven together from interviews and stories of the architects and visionaries who were there and helped to influence and develop naval aviation thoughout the twentieth century.
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