Reddit reviews Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway

For anybody interested in Midway, I strongly recommend Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway

All mine are WWII books.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors - Story of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a Destroyer Escort, and a David vs. Goliath battle between a small US fleet and a huge Japanese fleet.

Neptune's Inferno - story of the USN at Guadalcanal.

Ship of Ghosts - Story of the USS Houston

Clash of The Carriers - About the Marianas Turkey Shoot

In Harms Way - The story of the USS Indianapolis, a crusier that delivered the core of the nuclear bombs used on Japan, and the secret sinking and horrible story of her survivors.

Shattered Sword - a new story of the battle of midway.

Well, the obvious immediate go-to would be Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941, which is pretty much exactly what you're looking for.

In addition to describing the design philosophies driving Japanese naval architecture during their buildup to the Second World War, it also describes the evolution of the strategy, tactics, organization, culture, and technology developed by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The book also has a fairly broad chronological focus, encompassing the entire era between the foundation of the IJN and the opening battles of the Pacific War.

It's considered one of the more prominent Western works on the topic in recent years. It's also fairly engagingly written, so I'd recommend you check it out.

If you're interested in naval air power's development by Japan, I'd also check out Sunburst, by one of the same authors, as well as the acclaimed Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Parshall and Tully, which both provide in-depth analysis of Japanese carrier doctrine and tactics. The latter book is particularly groundbreaking in the Western scholarship of the battle for overturning several longstanding myths surrounding Midway.

EDIT: Fun fact - Kaigun is the only reason why I know who the heck Emile Bertin was :)

https://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Sword-Untold-Battle-Midway/dp/1574889249

The book is worth checking out too.

Anyone who mentions The Battle of Midway without mentioning Shattered Sword is doing a disservice to their audience. I think this would be a perfect carrier combat book for OP.

That's been largely discredited, particularly by naval historians in Japan and elsewhere.

This is nearer the truth, http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Sword-Untold-Battle-Midway/dp/1574889249/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347897717&sr=8-1&keywords=shattered+sword

One of the often overlooked results of the Coral Sea was that the Shokaku and Zuikaku were taken out of service for the Midway campaign. The Zuikaku's air group (the planes, at least) could have been easily replaced, but Japanese carrier doctrine called for operating carriers in pairs (Akagi/Kaga, Soryu/Hiryu, Shokau/Zuikaku), which meant the Japanese left the Zuikaku at home during the Midway campaign.

If the Americans had not patched up/repaired the Yorktown so quickly and/or if the Japanese had brought the Zuikaku, the carrier odds could have dropped from 4:3 to 5:3 or 5:2, depending on the scenario.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Sword-Untold-Battle-Midway/dp/1574889249

The Japanese reconnaissance aircraft that should have been flying where the US aircraft carriers were was off playing cowboy on their own route and not the route he should have been on.

http://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Sword-Untold-Battle-Midway/dp/1574889249

The US could very well not have had the surprise that it did. There are tons of fascinating elements to it. I'd rather a Band of Brothers type miniseries of it to cover it in the depth (no pun intended) it deserves.

Another thing is that Japan could not make up for the much greater shipbuilding capacity of the U.S. The U.S. had far more shipyards than Japan, and despite all the territory Japan was able to conquer at the start of the war there were no shipyards capable of building anything larger than a destroyer in all of the occupied territory.

So Japan's shipbuilding was largely fixed, and the U.S. capacity was much larger and also underused in the pre-war years. After Pearl Harbor, U.S. shipyards started building almost 100 'jeep' carriers, and eventually ended with dozens of larger fleet carriers, while Japan was only able to add 3 carriers to its fleet. Japan could simply not keep up with either the U.S. building, or its own losses.

Source: Shattered Sword

Anything by Clay Blair, he was a submariner during the war and a competent author.

https://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Sword-Untold-Battle-Midway/dp/1574889249

"Shattered Sword" by John Parshall and Tony Tully is an excellent volume on the "Battle of Midway". Parshall exposes the mythos of Midway by turning Fuchida's account of the battle on its ear. He accessed a mountain of primary sources rather than relying on Fuchida.

Parshall has several lectures on Y-tube, all of them are worth watching.

Be sure to watch any of the lectures sponsored by the Naval War College. Their line up is unusually competent and watchable.

There's a Ted Talk on the Norden bombsight that's enlightening as well.

Be sure to take a very critical eye when watching historical videos on Y-tube. There's a lot of crap on Y-tube.

Nicholas Moran "The Chieftan" does a very nice series on Y-tube about armored fighting vehicles. He does his own research and it shows. He is one of my favorites.

You're welcome. If your interest in the Pacific theater is broader, you may also consider "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. It revisits the battle of Midway from the Japanese perspective and is excellent.

Other extremely good works are John B. Lundstrom's The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway and The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942. Despite the appearance of these titles, they are not dry academic works, but full of interesting facts and quite fun reading.

Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-194 by D. M. Giangreco is an excellent work examining the end of the war in the Pacific, what the impact of strategic bombing was (nuclear and conventional), how the US and her allies planned to invade Kyushu and Honshu, how much the Japanese knew and how far developed their preparations were, and reasonable estimates of how events would play out if the invasions had actually been carried out. He examines how the details of each sides' plans would play out, the impact of nuclear weapons in the tactical role, how actual weather conditions and events would impact the land and sea portions of the campaigns and more.

I own all of the above and recommend them whole-heartedly.

A brief search also gave videos of several speeches/talks by Jon Parshall, but I haven't viewed them yet. Given the quality of his and Tully's work in Shattered Sword, I plan to watch each of them now.

This is pretty much the reason. The Japanese and the Germans did the same thing with their pilots. I am not sure for the Germans, but for the Japanese this was compounded by the veteran pilots, who had been flying for years in China as well, did not mingle with the newer pilots. This meant that there was less mentorship, and thus the skills the veterans learned were not readily passed through to the newer pilots.

The Americans took most of their 'ace' fighters and sent them back stateside to train more pilots.

Shattered Sword has a good take on the American vs Japanese pilots.

Shattered Sword. Insightful look at Midway.