The Smithsonian oral-history collection brings together thirty first-hand accounts from senior US naval aviators. Its contributors illuminate the Thach Weave, Doolittle Raid, Coral Sea, Guadalcanal, and the growth of Task Force 58. Personal testimony shows how carrier warfare felt and functioned to the people developing it. The contributors were also post-war advocates of naval aviation with institutional arguments of their own, so their recollections should be read with that context in mind.
Chapter · 23:31-28:00
First-hand accounts of Pacific carrier warfare
Carrier Warfare in the Pacific gathers senior US naval aviators’ accounts of raids, task forces, and carrier operations in the Second World War.