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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The definitive account of the Guadalcanal campaign, 3 Sep 1998
By A Customer
Richard B. Frank has written what I consider to be the authoritative account of the Guadalcanal campaign of August 1942-February 1943. A military offensive undertaken by the United States seven months after the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbour, the Guadalcanal campaign was marked on both sides by successes as well as by setbacks. What I found particularly fascinating was Richard Frank's detailed description of the Imperial Japanese Navy's three areas of superiority over the U.S. Navy during their naval engagements: (1) highly trained naval gunners and commanders who were well-versed in night fighting naval tactics; (2) night optics/night vision capabilities; (2) the Long Lance torpedo. In a number of instances, Japanese naval lookouts were able to see approaching U.S. Navy ships long before the U.S. Navy could identify Japanese vessels! The superiority of the Long Lance torpedo over its American counterpart (the latter was virtually useless in sinking anything!) allowed the Imperial Japanese Navy to seriously damage or sink a number of American ships.Frank also points out that during the naval encounters off the coast of Guadalcanal, the U.S. Navy utilised radar with mixed results. Land masses - like Savo Island just off the north-west coast of Guadalcanal - produced misleading images on the U.S. Navy's radar screens at night. In addition, with the exception of U.S. Admiral Willis "Ching" Lee who commanded a battleship-based naval task force off the coast of Guadalcanal, few American naval officers had been trained in the use of naval radar and were thus unable to understand or properly exploit this new technology within the confined waters of "Iron Bottom Sound." I was particularly intrigued to read Frank's detailed descriptions of U.S. Marine Major General Alexander Vandegrift's calculated, strikingly bold, even risk-taking tactical dispositions and offensive operations against the Japanese Army, particularly the series of battles along the Matanikau River just west of the U.S. Marine base at Henderson Field. These actions, based on his and his staff's brilliant analyses of the strengths and shortcomings of the Japanese Army, allowed the U.S. Marines to keep the Japanese Army off balance. When the Japanese Army did strike, the Marines more than met the challenge. After all the setbacks and successes, victory came to the Americans in February 1943 with Japan's withdrawal from the island that the Japanese soldiers called "Starvation Island." A companion book to Frank's account of the Guadalcanal campaign, and one that I would highly recommend, is James Jones's autobiographical novel, "The Thin Red Line," based on Jones's experiences as a combat infantryman in the U.S. 25th Infantry Division during the Guadalcanal campaign. Richard Frank's book immortalises those Americans and Japanese who fought on the land, in the air and on the seas in this epochal military campaign.
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