Using diary entries, interviews and first-hand accounts, this vivid narrative brings to life the struggle in the air over the island of Guadalcanal between August 20 and November 15, 1942.The battle of Guadalcanal was the first offensive operation undertaken by the US and its allies in the Pacific War. The three months of air battles between August 20, 1942, when the first Marine air unit arrived on the island, and November 15, when the last enemy attempt to retake...

"An authoritative look at an event that has taken on a legendary status . . . [an] essential history for those wanting the truth behind the legend" ( Publishers Weekly).Joe Rosenthal's "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" photo is one of the best-known images of US war history—and a powerful symbol of patriotism. But the story of how the flag got there, and even the identity of the soldiers in the photo, has been muddied by history. Here, military historian Eric...

Bloomsbury presents The Cactus Air Force by Eric Hammel and Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, read by Adam Henderson.Using diary entries, interviews and first-hand accounts, this vivid narrative brings to life the struggle in the air over the island of Guadalcanal between August 20 and November 15, 1942.The battle of Guadalcanal was the first offensive operation undertaken by the US and its allies in the Pacific War. The three months of air battles between August 20, 1942, when the ...

Although U.S. Marines had broken the back of the Japanese on Guadalcanal in furious combat between August 1942 and February 1943, much hard fighting remained to be endured on jungle-choked islands to the north. Between late 1942 and the end of 1943, the Marines on the ground and in the air took part in a series of battles and campaigns in the central and northern Solomon Islands, all part of the effort to reach and neutralize the Japanese regional air, naval and supply base at Rabaul, at t...

GUADALCANAL: Decision at Sea, The Naval Battle of GuadalcanalNovember 1315,1942 by Eric Hammel = Guadalcanal: Decision at Sea is a full-blown examination in vivid detail of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 13 15, 1942, a crucial step toward Americas victory over the Japanese during World War II. = The three day air and naval action incorporated Americas most decisive surface battle of the war and the only naval battle of this century in which American battleships directly confronted ...

CARRIER STRIKEThe Battle of the Santa Cruz IslandsOctober 1942By Eric HammelThe Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, a strategic naval action in the bitter Guadalcanal Campaign, was historys fourth carrier-versus-carrier naval battle. Though technically a Japanese victory, the battle proved to be the Empire of Japans last serious attempt to win the Pacific War by means of an all-out carrier confrontation. Only one other carrier battle occurred in the Pacific War, in June 1944, in the Philippine ...

CARRIER CLASHThe Invasion of Guadalcanal &the Battle of the Eastern SolomonsAugust 1942Eric HammelThe Battle of the Eastern Solomons was historys third carrier clash. A collision of U.S. Navy and Imperial Navy carriers in the wake of the invasion of Guadalcanalwhose airfield the United States desperately needed and the Japanese desperately wanted backthe battle was waged at sea and over Guadalcanals besieged Marine-held Lunga Perimeter on August 24, 1942. Based upon the first half of Eric Ha...

AMBUSH VALLEYI Corps, Vietnam, 1967the Story of a Marine Infantry Battalion's Battle for SurvivalEric HammelIn the summer of 1967, the Marines in I Corps, South Vietnams northernmost military region, were doing eveything they could to lighten the pressure on the besieged Con Thien Combat Base.Still fresh after months of relatively light action around Khe Sanh, the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was sent to the Con Thien region to secure the combat basess endangered main supply route. On Septembe...

MUNDA TRAIL: The New Georgia Campaign, JuneAugust 1943 by Eric Hammel + Munda Trail is the dramatic, harrowing story of green American soldiers encountering for the first time impenetrable swamps, solid rain forests, invisible coconut log pillboxes, tenacious snipers tied into trees, torrential tropical rains, counterattack by enemy aircraft and naval guns, and the logistical nightmare of living and moving in endless mud. A carefully planned offensive quickly degenerates into isolated small-u...

ChosinHeroic Ordeal of the Korean WarEric HammelTold from the point of view of the men in the foxholes and tanks, outposts, and command posts, Eric Hammels Chosin is the definitive account of the epic retreat under fire of the 1st Marine Division from the Chosin Reservoir in December 1950. The author first sketches in the errors and miscalculations on the part of the American high command that caused the Marines to be strung out at the end of a narrow road scores of miles from the sea. He th...

KHE SANH: Siege in the Clouds, An Oral History by Eric Hammel From critcally acclaimed military historian Eric Hammel comes a vivid oral history account of the Tet 1968 siege of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. The words of American fighting men caught up in the grueling, deadly seventy-seven-day ordeal create a harrowing tapestry of tragedy and triumph. = As two North Vietnamese Army divisions move to surround them, the vastly outnumbered U.S. Marines rush to strengthen their defenses at the isolat...

The six-month Guadalcanal campaign was the longest and most complicated operation U.S. Marines faced in the Pacific War. In July 1942, when it was discovered that the Japanese were building a bomber base on the island, the 1st Marine Division was the only Allied force available to respond to the threat. Although the airfield was seized without a fight after the Marines landed on August 7,1942, a Japanese naval attack the following night drove off the supporting U.S. Navy forces before the ...