Bloed in de Koraalzee

by Edwin P. Hoyt

Na de verpletterende slag van Pearl Harbour in het voorjaar van 1942, was de Japanse vloot oppermachtig. De Japanners veroverden Singapore, Hong Kong en de Filipijnen. Daarna stoomde de vloot op naar Australië. Alleen de Amerikaanse marine kon hem nog tegenhouden. In de Koraalzee brak de bloedigste strijd uit, die een nieuw tijdperk in de oorlogsvoering inluidde.

Genres: History, War, World War II, Military Fiction, Nonfiction, Naval History

452 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Edwin P. Hoyt was a prolific American writer who specialized in military history. He was born in Portland, Oregon to the publisher Edwin Palmer Hoyt (1897–1979) and his wife, the former Cecile DeVore (1901–1970). A younger brother, Charles Richard, was born in 1928. Hoyt attended the University of Oregon from 1940 to 1943.

In 1943, Hoyt's father, then the editor and publisher of The Oregonian, was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as the director of the Domestic Branch, Office of War Information. The younger Hoyt served with the Office of War Information during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 and 1946, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Denver Post (of which his father became editor and publisher in 1946) and the United Press, reporting from locations in China, Thailand, Burma, India, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and Korea.

Edwin Hoyt subsequently worked as an ABC broadcaster, covering the 1948 revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 1949 to 1951, he was the editor of the editorial page at The Denver Post. He was the editor and publisher of the Colorado Springs Free Press from 1951 to 1955, and an associate editor of Collier's Weekly in New York from 1955 to 1956. In 1957 he was a television producer and writer-director at CBS, and in 1958 he was an assistant publisher of American Heritage magazine in New York.

Starting in 1958, Hoyt became a writer full-time, and for a few years (1976 to 1980) served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Hawaii. In the 40 years since his first publication in 1960, he produced nearly 200 published works.

While Hoyt wrote about 20 novels (many published under pseudonyms Christopher Martin and Cabot L. Forbes) the vast majority of his works are biographies and other forms of non-fiction, with a heavy emphasis on World War II military history.

Hoyt died in Tokyo, Japan on July 29, 2005, after a prolonged illness. He was survived by his wife Hiroko, of Tokyo, and three children, Diana, Helga, and Christopher, all residing in the U.S.

Reviews

[Dimitri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een evenwichtige mix van strategie & actie op scheepsdekniveau dat het belang van de slag 'tussen' Pearl Harbour en Midway onderstreept, waarbij de dominantie over de wateren rondom de uitvalbasis Australië werd veiliggesteld en Japan zijn eerste vliegdekschip verloor.

[Billy Leon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was actually well written and informative. Mr. Hoyt definitely knows is way around a World War II warship and can freely illustrate his knowledge using the naval vocabulary. The things that I found disappointing about this work was that it was written almost entirely from the American point of view, and that practically half the work was devoted to the destruction of and the hardships of the crew of a single vessel (U.S.S. Neosho), considering this vessel played a minor part in the battle, a deep description of the trials and tribulations visited on some of the other warships involved, would have been more interesting. For instance, I really would have been interested in the stories from the few surviving crewmen of the Shoho. At times the text read something like what I would have expected from my old high school football coach, then at times it was impressively worded, concise, and direct, almost like it was written by two different people. Lastly and probably most importantly since it really interfered with the smoothness or the flow of the read, was the large number of typographical errors and open ended sentences that truly had no meaning. You were not sure if you missed something, or if you got caught up a few sentences down the line. So in essence the book was horribly edited, if edited at all. Still there are not many writings on this particular battle, and the author does a pretty good job in informing the reader of what was going on during the Coral Sea Campaign, for that Mr. Hoyt hits the mark.

[Bill V · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very pedestrian read. There are some interesting and unique anecdotes but this is not a compelling book. The book is slim as it is and could have been reduced a bit. Too many pages are devoted to the ordeal of an oiler, the U.S.S Neosho. I'd say about 20% of the total pages deal with the ship and its crew. In the grand scheme of events and participants in the battle, this is way too much coverage. An oiler is not a critical ship and it received coverage comparable to that of a truly valuable ship, the fleet carrier U.S.S. Lexington.
Overall, there are very few books that only cover the Battle of the Coral Sea , so there are almost no alternative titles. There are a couple of minor and trivial mistakes in the book but nothing that materially affects the reading of the title.

[Nolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t pretend to be a World War II history expert, but I suspect there aren’t many sources out there regarding the Battle of the Coral Sea, which occurred in the south Pacific in May 1942. This historian summarizes it as a battle the Japanese won but the Americans won strategically. In other words, they sank and damaged more of our stuff than we did theirs, but they could ever again get a toe hold near enough to Australia and strategic places in its environs to be effective. It’s a battle we both won and lost.

This isn’t one of those dense, long histories. You’ll be into this seven hours at normal speed. There’s a bit of a fixation on an oil tanker, but that’s understandable. It’s loss creates some high drama and the loss of lives resulting from its destruction is significant and arguably needless.

[Bill O'Driscoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readable history of the Battle of the Coral Sea