Product Description

Timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor here is an unprecedented account of the extraordinary World War II air land and sea campaign that brought the U.S. Navy to the apex of its?strength and marked the rise of the United States as a global superpower.?

? ? ?Drawing on new primary sources and personal accounts by Americans and Japanese alike The Fleet at Flood Tide?is a thrilling narrative of the climactic end stage of the Pacific War focusing on the U.S. invasion of the Mariana Islands in June 1944 and the momentous events that it produced.

? ? ?With its thunderous assault into Japan's inner defensive perimeter America crossed the threshold of total war. From the seaborne invasion of Saipan to the stunning aerial?battles of the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot from the largest banzai attack of the war to the first mass suicides of?Japanese civilians to the strategic bombing effort that culminated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Marianas became the fulcrum of the drive to compel Tokyo to surrender--with consequences that forever c"anged modern war.

? ? ?These unprecedented operations saw the first large-scale use of Navy underwater demolition teams; a revolution in the fleet's ability to sustain cross-hemispheric expeditionary warfare; the struggle of American troops facing not only a suicidal enemy garrison?? but desperate Japanese civilians; and the rise of the U.S. Navy as the greatest of grand fleets. From the Marianas?? B-29 Superfortresses would finally unleash nuclear fire on an enemy resolved to fight to the end.

? ? ?Hornfischer casts this clash of nations and cultures with cinematic scope and penetrating insig