Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (The Pacific War Trilogy, 1)

Having thoroughly enjoyed Ian Toll's history of the founding of the U.S. Navy in Six Frigates, I was looking forward to his history of its glory days in the Pacific during WWII. I was not disappointed. Pacific Crucible is a fine account of the crucial six months between Pearl Harbor and Midway.

The events and much of the material Toll uses to describe them will be familiar to students of the period. What makes Toll's book such a pleasurable read is the quality of his narrative style and his superb judgment in deciding which items to include and how to arrange them. His perceptive prologue and his portraits of the key players are quite good as well. The prologue in particular offers a worthwhile explanation of how quickly Japan caught up with the western world and then was fatally tempted to subdue it.

In addition, I found Toll's description of the Battle of the Coral Sea fresh and comprehensive. This important battle is often relegated to a passing mention as the prelude to Midway, but Toll corrects that oversight. His recounting of the role intelligence played in the ultimate defeat of the Japanese also goes well beyond that provided in other books on the subject. Among other things, I had not considered the value of Halsey's raids in the early months of 1942 to the cryptologists - the resulting increase in Japanese radio traffic helped to identify locations, ships, and even officers.

There are a few glitches. The International Date Line is not northeast of Oahu, and the term "shuttle bombing" is misused. I also tired of the numerous references to pilots as "flyboys." After several odd references to "fuel tankers," Toll labels these ships with the more familiar term "fleet oilers." These are very minor complaints, however, and should not deter anyone from acquiring this highly recommended book.

Ian W Toll has done it again. It has been years since I read his first book, "Six Frigates" so when I saw that he was releasing another book on naval history, I was more than excited.

The "Pacific Crucible" starts out with a brilliant account of the Mahan tactics,which helps establish his point of how a sailor from the 1850's would be more accustomed to the life aboard a ship in the 1600's than in the 1900's. This is continued by the detailed descriptions of the political situations that developed the conflict on both fronts. The, Toll delves into a graphic and violent account of the day that has lived in infamy for over 70 years.

I was enlightened at how Chruchill convinced Roosevelt that a Europe first strategy was more important than committing to a Pacific campaign, and the descriptions of how the Japanese military converted their society for war brought their ultimate demise.

The naval battles were done in an informative and exciting fashion. For those that claim that history is dull, I recommend that they read a Toll book.

My one complaint about the book is that the ending felt somewhat rushed. Toll concludes the Battle of Midway, and then after a several pages briefly proving Admiral Yamamoto's early predictions of how war with the United States would end, the book ends itself. I was expecting more regarding the rest of the war, but since the book was primarily about the major naval actions of the Pacific, it was understandable, seeing how the subtitle of the book states it only accounts from 1941-1942.

Overall, a five star rating barely does this magnificent book justice. I certainly hope that Toll is working on another project.

OK - I'm only up to chapter 5 but for all the fans of Ian Toll's "Six Frigates" who want an early review; he's done it again.

To be honest I'm not a history buff nor fanatically interested in WWII or the Pacific Theatre (although as an Australian, I probably should be). But once again, Ian Toll's gripping writing has me keen to finish work today and get home to find out what happened to the overwhelmed lads on Wake Atoll, surrounded by Japanese and abandoned by a shell shocked naval leadership in Hawaii.

And pardon my complete ignorance, but Yamamoto went to Harvard and Nimitz spoke fluent german... It's a funny world. The portrait of Yamamoto is fascinating. He's more than a likable character.

Two books in, the author is fast creating a Toll trademark for combining enormous research and a gripping story telling ability.

I'll update this review when I've finished. I almost want to read it slowly and enjoy it for longer. You know he won't be back with his next book for few years. So five chapters in and I can't put it down. He's done it again.

This book has several virtues. The style is easy and unpretentious. The author has a talent for filling out the background of the events and personalities covered in a clear, precise and interesting manner. By covering only the events of the first six months of the war in the Pacific theater, the author is able to give considerable attention to details, which give the reader a more nearly complete picture of the people involved, and their thoughts and feelings.

Unfortunately there are frequent lapses by the author, which indicate either ignorance, confusion or sloppiness.

On page xxv of the introduction (in speaking of the Russo-Japanese War) he states, "For the first time in the modern era, since perhaps the Battle of Poitiers in 732, an Eastern power had triumphed over a Western one." Since the Battle of Poitiers was the Franks under Charles Martel defeating an invasion (or raid, depending on the school of thought) by Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula, is the author claiming that the Franks were "an Eastern power" and the Moors "a Western one"? Even if one could accept that interpretation, what about the numerous (and arguably more serious) defeats of "Western powers" by the Turks and the Mongols of much later date?

On page 23 he states that immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor "Rifles were handed out from the backs of trucks, including . . . some thoroughly obsolete bolt-action 1903 Springfields." At this date, the 1903 Springfield was the most commonly used rifle in the U.S. armed forces. It would not be generally replaced by the M-1 Garand until much later in the war. It was very much the equal of the Mauser and Enfield rifles, which were the main combat rifles of the Germans and the British throughout the war; and it was superior to the Japanese and Russian rifles of the period. In fact, it continued to be used as the principal sniper rifle for the U.S. armed forces until long after the war.

On page 32 he describes an event where several F4F "Wildcat" fighters from the carrier Enterprise were shot down by anti-aircraft guns while attempting to land on Ford Island. Then, on page 40, he describes the Enterprise sailing into Pearl Harbor past a scene of destruction including "One of the Enterprise's own dive-bombers, shot down the previous evening by friendly fire,..."

On page 285 he places the International Date Line to the east of Oahu.

In some passages, the author makes important assertions without explanation or elaboration: "In 1906, Great Britain launched a new battleship, the HMS Dreadnought. She had 12-inch guns and a 21-knot cruising speed, and from the day she slid down the ways every other battleship in the world was obsolete." (page xiv). This would lead the reader to erroneously conclude that 12-inch guns were exceptionally large or that 21-knots was exceptionally fast. In fact it was the number and arrangement of the main armament, combined with the speed and the arrangement of armor that made the Dreadnought class so revolutionary. (See [[ASIN:B000NPIKJK Dreadnought (1st Edition)]] for an excellent discussion.)

The author also (on pages 118-119) discusses the development of the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor without ever mentioning the precedent-setting attack by the British on the Italian fleet at Taranto in November of 1940 - on which the Japanese based their plans (including the modifications necessary to keep torpedoes dropped from planes from striking the bottom of a shallow harbor).

Unfortunately, when an author makes such frequent and serious errors, it inevitably brings into question the accuracy of the other information contained in the book.

The descriptions of the actual battles are very similar to the many other books, and unexceptional in either clarity or drama. Read this book for the background details and the thumbnail sketches of the individual commanders.

This book is one terrific read. As someone who has a deep interest in WW2 history, I try to read as many books on the subject as I can. The book is filled with new information and detail I was unaware of. For example, the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor is very well done. Descriptions of sailors and marines covered with fuel oil that was almost impossible to remove even with gasoline baths, the fear of the civilian population just after the attack, the difficulty of seaplanes to take off in water fouled with fuel oil(one of the pilots was a future CNO)and graphic descriptions of the injuries and burns are just some of the details that I have never read before.

The book also contains mini-biographies of men such as Yamamoto, Nimitz, and King which are succinct but very clear. The review of political events leading to war are also well done. Although this expression is probably overused, the book does read like a novel.

The above is only a small representation of the book which is very much worth your while. I do not think you will be disappointed.

I had very mixed feelings about this book. The key question I ask myself whenever I read a history book is, did I learn something new? By that standard, this book told me little that I didn't already know from studying the Pacific War for the past 40+ years. The things I did learn:

- That Pearl Harbor engineers asked for three months to repair the USS Yorktown is a myth; Admiral Nimitz already had told them they only had three days and "he had already been advised that he could have her".
- Captain Joseph Rochefort, one of the two key figures in breaking the Japanese naval codes, was blackballed after Midway by "the Redman brothers" and transferred out of the codebreaking unit.

The author also convinced me that Coral Sea wasn't just a strategic victory for the Americans, but also a tactical one, given that it knocked two Japanese fleet carriers out of the subsequent Battle of Midway

On the other hand, the book is a good book if you want to get into the details of the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway. Note that I didn't say that it's a good book to learn details about the all of the first two years of "War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-42" (the subtitle), because it's not. As you'll see from my notes below that I took as I read the book, there's a huge imbalance between the scant level of detail leading up to Coral Sea and Midway, and the ~100 pages devoted to each of those two battles.

We learn how many bomb and torpedo hits the Lexington, Yorktown Shoho, and Shokaku suffered in one battle, and the death throes of each of the carriers (but not the Japanese cruiser Mikuma or other ships) sunk at the two battles. But if you want to know how many bombs hit the Nevada, West Virginia, or Maryland at Pearl Harbor, look elsewhere. Likewise, don't ask too much about how USS Houston, HMAS Perth, or HMS Exeter were sunk.
There are some errors and inaccuracies:
- Calling The Russo-Japanese War "one of the largest and most destructive wars ever fought" ignores the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic War, and the American Civil War, to name a few (p. xxiv). Likewise, "for the first time in the modern era, since perhaps the Battle of Poitiers in 732, an Eastern power had triumphed over a Western one" ignores the falls of Jerusalem, Acre, and Cyprus, the Mongols, and the Ottomans, leaving aside the question of whether Russia in 1905 was a "Western" power (p. xxv).
- Hawaii is six times zones to the West of Washington DC, not five (p. 30).
- the Bataan Death March was "one of the most infamous atrocities of the Second World War" (p. 299) is a disservice to European atrocities (not to mention the Rape of Nanking) that resulted in death tolls over 100 times higher
- "Ultra was NOT "the name given to intelligence based on decrypyed Japanese messages", the code name was "Purple"
- The Lexington (CV-2) didn't have "steel deck plates" on the flight deck (p. 324). Throughout World War II every American carrier had a wooden flight deck and an armored hangar deck so that the ships were less top-heavy. Though Toll later corrected himself by mentioning “the wooden expense“ of the ships flight deck (p. 366).
- Toll isn't the first author to describe the American attack at Midway as coming at the Japanese "flank", but he perpetuates this meaningless description. When a carrier fleet sends out search planes in all directions, and when it can vector its bombers in those directions, the notion of a vulnerable flank is misleading (p. 390).
- He describes "Midway's still-formidable air forces" on the day of June 5, even though they amounted to some B-17's and a handfull of Marine dive bombers, none of which had scored a hit the day before (p. 461).

Here are my notes as I read the first two thirds of the book:

Through Page 170 (of 491)
What a strange book so far. Here I am over 1/3 of the way through the book, and we're barely to the end of December 1941. That's not because Toll spent dozens of pages on the lead-up to the war; the book essentially begins on the morning of December 7, 1941, in Oahu. The attack on Pearl Harbor is glossed over; there were more pages about Nimitz's upbringing and career prior to becoming CINCPAC, and also as many pages on the battle and on-again, off-again relief of Wake Island. If you want to know what happened at Pearl Harbor, this isn't the book.

How are we possibly going to cover Singapore, the Philippines, Java Sea and Sunda Strait, Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal at this pace?

Pages 171 to 334
Now two thirds of the way, and I discovered the way to cover Singapore, the Philippines, Java Sea and Sunda Strait is to effectively skip the first two (the subtitle is "War at Sea..." after all!) and to devote a combined three pages to Java Sea and Sunda Strait. On the other hand Toll devoted many pages to the relatively insignificant US carrier raid of the Gilberts and Marshalls in early 1942.

On page 323 we finally start to get the story of the Battle of Coral Sea.

The author did a good job at using all the available English sources to document the Pacific Campaign of WWII. Unfortunately, that approach just doesn't work anymore. Western authors have got to start using the available Japanese sources to give both sides of these events. This author did not, apparently, make the effort to use Japanese-language sources according to the bibliography.

The Senshi Sōsho, Japan's official, multi-volume war history, has been available to Western researchers and historians for at least 20 years now. Apparently, the only reason they haven't been using it generally is because of the language barrier. That is no excuse, because there are some Western historians, such as Richard B. Frank, John Lundstrom, and a few others, who haven't let that get in the way of using that source, and their books are so much the better for it.

The Senshi Sōsho, along with many other books covering the Japanese experience in the Pacific War, is kept at the War History Office at the National Defense Institute in Tokyo, Japan. The staff at that office can speak English and are more than willing to help any Western historian. All the Western historians have to do is go there and ask. Again, apart from penny-pinching, there is no excuse not too. Here's the thing, if you, as an historian, is going to spend a year or more of your life writing a book on an event from WWII, why wouldn't you take the extra effort to make it as complete as you can?

The author of this book doesn't appear to have made this effort and it shows in the lack of detail on the Japanese perspective in the depicted events. For one thing, the record of Japanese losses in airplanes, personnel, and ships will be much different, and greatly more accurate, when Japanese sources are used. I recommend that everyone interested in purchasing a Western book on the Pacific War to first check the bibliography to see if the author used the Senshi Sōsho. If they didn't, don't buy the book.

"Pacific Crucible" opens with an expansive prologue that some readers might find a bit too long - it looks a lot more like a major chapter. In fact, it is. The prologue is Toll's setup for the entire Pacific War, going back to the 19th century for a detailed review and analysis of decades of history that ultimately turned December 7th into a day of infamy. Digesting the prologue will give the reader a solid grounding for all that follows. Without its thoroughness, the book would start to look like a lot of others that begin with little more than bombs falling on Oahu.

There are 12 reasonably-sized chapters that cover every element of the war through the Battle of Midway, and the level of detail and fresh analysis that Toll brings to each is superb. The other five-star reviews here adequately express any other reasons you should get this book, so I won't repeat them. Suffice to say, if you have a strong focus on World War II in the Pacific, this volume belongs front and center on your bookshelf. It's arguably the new standard for Pearl Harbor to Midway.

For those curious as to why Toll's fine effort ceases with the end of the Battle of Midway, be assured that it doesn't. This is but the first volume of what will probably be a trilogy that takes its subject into Tokyo Bay and beyond.

I've been reading WWII books for 30 years and most every book about Pearl Harbor and most of them about Midway that I can lay my hands on. I really thought after some of them that I highly recommend such as "the Battle of Midway" by Symonds and "Shattered Sword" by Parshall & Tully there really wasn't much else to be said about the early Pacific war(these are outstanding books both of them and must reads for the serious student of the battle). But I was wrong Pacific Crucible goes beyond the battle into the minds and politics of the American, British and Japanese leaders. It becomes very understandable why and how certain decisions were made and risks taken. This is a great book and highly recommended. There was a lot of background that I haven't seen covered in this amount detail before. This isn't a casual read, but a serious text and look underneath the decisions.

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. During the ensuing six months, the Japanese won victory after victory while the Americans struggled to get their war footing. In this excellent book, author Ian Toll describes these dark early days of the war up to the tide-turning Battle of Midway.

After the loss of much of its ships at Pearl Harbor, the American Pacific fleet was reduced to the role of hit-and-run attacks, while the Japanese Imperial Navy roamed unmolested over the Pacific. Wake, Malaya, Singapore, and Java soon succumbed to the Japanese. The Americans launched nuisance raids from the surviving aircraft carriers, but none of these raids did any significant damage to the Japanese. In April, 1942, Bataan fell and, one month later, Corregidor surrendered. The path to Australia seemed wide open for the Japanese. However, the Americans had begun to fight back.

On April 18th, 1942, a force of Army B-25 bombers took off from the USS Hornet and bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities. This attack, while causing little actual damage, had a profound psychological effect on the Japanese. In May, 1942, the Japanese advance was checked at the battle of the Coral Sea, and in June, the Japanese lost 4 fleet carriers at the Battle of Midway. Now placed on the defensive, the Japanese would never again regain the offensive in the war, while the American navy grew to enormous size.

"Pacific Crucible" is a very good book. Ian Toll does a fine job of describing the early battles of the Pacific War, including the ill-fated relief effort at Wake Island. There are many first-hand accounts of the battles, and Toll's style is easy to read and understand. If you are looking for information on the first six months of the Pacific war, then don't miss this fine book. Highly recommended.