One thing about history is that when you think you know all about a subject, a book comes along that makes it obvious that you do not. That is the thing about history. Often times, what has been considered as true for a very long time, turns out not to be quite as true as you might have thought. It is the job, nay the requirement of a good historian to do the leg work, go through primary sources, and either confirm or update what has gone before. In other words, to revise history to match the facts. That, my friends, is actually what revisionist history is all about.

There are few aviation historians of the upper echelon who will put forth all the research required and one of them is the author of this book, Barrett Tillman. If you have read any of his previous works, you know how meticulous he is and this book shows it.

In a nutshell, it is a brief history of USMC fighter aviation in WWII. In here you will follow these units from Midway to Guadalcanal and up the chain of islands to the final days of the Pacific war. Here you read about pilots like Marion Carl, John Smith, Harold Bauer, Gregory Boyington, and the Marine's ace of aces, Joe Foss.

First we look at the aircraft these men flew. Mostly Wildcats and Corsairs, but some flew Buffalos and Hellcats. Then we get an overview of the history of USMC fighter units in the war zone. This is followed by a look at each fighter unit that was formed during the war in numerical sequence. Next we look at the biographies of some of the more prominent pilots. This is followed by citations of every USMC fighter pilot that received the Medal of Honor.

The next section is on whether Foss or Boyington is the leading USMC ace. This is followed by the combat strategy and tactics of Boyington, for though self-aggrandizing, he was a consummate fighter pilot. Next is a wartime interview with Joe Foss. There are two dozen appendices that cover a wide variety of subjects, all of them interesting to read. A truly comprehensive study that makes for great reading. Through all this I found only one possible omission. In the squadrons section, there is a post war history of all the units. I noticed that VMF-333 missed its post war history. This unit was active until disestablished in 1992. Either that or my understanding of unit lineage is faulty. As you know often times a unit name will be assigned to a different unit number, and this has happened throughout Naval aviation history.

December 2014

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