 Publishers
Weekly
According to an old U.S. Coast Guard saying,
the American-controlled Aleutian island of Attu is "not the
end of the earth,but you can see it from there." Attu was attacked
and briefly occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and the
battle to win it back marked the beginning of the end for the seven-man
crew of Bomber 31. Former Air Force Colonel Wetterhahn, a certified
aircraft investigator and author (The Last Battle: The Mayaguez
Incident and the End of the Vietnam War), joined a forensics team
in 2000, journeying to Kamchatka in the Russian tundra to investigate
the crash site. Wetterhahn unravels the mystery of the crash while
giving a full account of the air war in the Aleutians. He describes
the various air battles with enough detail and enthusiasm to satisfy
military aficionados, and his interviews with American and Japanese
airmen give the story emotional weight. Many of the interviewees
wound up in Russian POW camps as both air forces found it difficult
to stay in the neutral territory mapped out by the 1941 Soviet-Japanese
Neutrality Pact. The stark recollections of the pilots who navigated
above the fog, volcanoes and icy waters, and who encountered Soviet
prisoners on their way to the gulags, are revealing and will fill
readers with admiration for the pilots on both sides. As one B-25
copilot remembers, "Every time I looked at the water, I swallowed
to keep my heart down. The water was just whipped to a froth by
machine gun bullets, shell fragments, 20-mm slugs, and big stuff
that was throwing up geysers." These vivid recollections, combined
with Wetterhahn's efficient writing and rigorous research, make
this a gripping war chronicle. 85 photos.
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a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Reviews
Military historian Wetterhahn (Shadowmakers,
2002, etc.) travels into the Far North to investigate a long-ago
air crash and turns in a well-told study of a nearly forgotten campaign.
The Aleutians were never more than a sideshow in the larger Pacific
War, but what a sideshow they were: as Wetterhahn notes, the presence
of a few thousand Japanese invaders tied up nearly 150,000 American
and Canadian troops in the early years of WWII, while toward the
end "the roles were reversed as a small number of planes flown
by U.S. Navy crews forced a large number of Japanese troops to be
stationed in the Kuriles"-troops that otherwise would have
been put to use against MacArthur's island-hopping armies farther
south. Wetterhahn's account of the discovery of a downed, bomb-laden
American plane in Russia's Kamchatka region provides a peg on which
to hang a larger narrative of the struggle to control the Bering
Sea, a battle fought mostly in the air under difficult conditions,
with heavy snows, winds that "could be blowing at a hundred
miles an hour from every direction at the same time," and over-extended
supply lines complicating an already dangerous business. Adding
to this, for both American and Japanese crews, was the odd fact
that the Soviet Union was officially neutral until the end of the
war, so that American crews that crossed into Russian airspace were
in danger of being shot down. So were the Japanese, 600,000 of whom
were packed off to the Gulag when the Red Army finally took to the
field against them. Aviation and military-history buffs will find
all this fascinating, and would-be treasure hunters will be especially
interested in Wetterhahn's account of the whereabouts of a downed
PV-1Ventura, the rarest of period aircraft-though, he warns, the
wreck is considered government property and technically off-limits
to salvagers. A well-illustrated and capably written glimpse into
a slice of WWII history.
Agent: Nancy Ellis-Bell
Booklist
Professional crash investigator^B Wetterhahn
relates his investigation of two missing American bombers from World
War II that were found on Russian soil. It is a story of forensic
archaeology conducted in vile weather under the auspices of a ramshackle
Russian bureaucracy and dependent on even more ramshackle Russian
helicopters. It frames an excellent history of the WWII Aleutians
campaign and the subsequent Empire Express air campaign against
Japanese bases in the Kuril Islands. That campaign tied down substantial
Japanese resources, but the weather in the region made it one of
the most grueling campaigns of the war for both attackers and defenders,
and losses were great. Interned American aircrews were kept under
austere conditions and eventually had to be smuggled out of the
Soviet Union to avoid offending the Japanese. A smooth and accessible
narrative.
Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Checkpoints
Wetterhahn's research of military archives
with American and Japanese veterans of the Arctic campaigns, his
use of secondary sources, and experience as a pilot and aircraft
crash investigator provides depth and detail rarely seen in a popular
history.... (he) tells the history of the Aleutian campaigns with
special emphasis to recognize the many American and Japanese servicemen
who served their country gallantly, often giving the greatest sacrifice.
Wetterhahn's carefully crafted book is a must read for enthusiasts
of airpower history, World War II history, and MIA accounts.
Kenneth Underwood, Department of History,
USAF Academy |
