Air Carrier Papeete Tahiti

Aircraft carriers were used in many of the crucial naval engagements of the Second World War, ranging front the Royal Navy's hunt for the Bismarck and the protection of Convoy PQ18 in the Arctic, to the US Navy's victories against the Japanese in the Coral Sea and at Midway in the Pacific theatre. It was superior American sea power that finally drove the Japanese into bloody retreat and towards ultimate defeat. In the years that followed the Second World War, aircraft carriers played a vital role as capital ships in the projection of power across the globe. This was particularly so in the opening conflicts of the Cold War period when carrier air power was used to effect in Korea and at Suez during the 1950s. The US made extensive use of carrier-based aircraft during the Vietnam war as did Britain in the later Falklands conflict. In 1991, US Navy carriers were instrumental in the successful prosecution of Operation Desert Storm. Combining the author's own narrative with vivid first-hand accounts by those who served aboard the ships, or with the carrier-borne naval and marine air squadrons, Carrier Combat is the dramatic story of the aircraft carrier at war. Fully illustrated with archive photographs in colour and black and white, it will appeal to all with an interest in naval air power.

Serving as a sequel to Kaigun, the prize-winning study of the surface and sub-surface forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy, this work illuminates the rise of Japanese naval aviation from its genesis in 1909 to its thunderbolt capability on the eve of the Pacific War. It provides the most detailed account yet available in English of Japan's naval air campaign over China from 1937 to 1941 and concludes with a revealing chapter on the utter destruction of Japanese naval air power by 1944, in the process explaining its essential strengths and weaknesses. Author Mark Peattie traces the development of the Navy's land-based air power as well as the evolution of its carrier forces. He also treats all the salient aspects of the naval air service: training, personnel, tactics, doctrine, technology, and industrial base. In doing so, he combines data found in previous handbooks with important new information derived from Japanese language sources. The book's appendixes include biographic summaries of important personnel mentioned in the text, detailed drawings and data on Japanese carriers and naval aircraft, and information on Japanese naval air bases and land-based air groups as of 7 December 1941.