Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

“Ship-borne aviation is necessarily helpless against the enemy’s land-based aviation, and the ‘bases’ themselves are extremely vulnerable. Navies have been disqualified for what used to be one of their primary jobs: to take the offensive initiative against enemy shores.”1 By 1944, that portion of Seversky’s argument had been debunked by the exploits of Task Force 58, the main carrier striking force of the Pacific Fleet. Nothing like it had ever been seen on the high seas, nothing like it has existed since 1945, and it is unlikely that a fighting fleet will ever again be built on such a scale. The mighty armada typically comprised twelve to sixteen aircraft carriers with a screen of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Its great size rendered it omnipotent in whatever part of the ocean it occupied. Task Force 58 could put more than a thousand warplanes into the air in thirty minutes, send them to attack an enemy 200 miles away, and recover them safely when they returned. The planes attacked with bombs, torpedoes, rockets, incendiary .50-caliber machine-gun fire, and napalm.