Fire from the Sky Quotes

“The writers of these reports used typewriters and carbon paper, making the correction of mistakes difficult, and they were often better at fighting their ships than writing reports, so there are a good many misspellings and grammatical errors in these pages.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“Her awards included not only honors from the US Navy – a Presidential Unit Citation, a Navy Unit Commendation and 20 battle stars for her flag – but also a rare honor from the Royal Navy. She became, when she stopped at Southampton in November 1945, the only non-Royal Navy warship ever awarded an Admiralty Pennant.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“Readers used to modern solid-state electronic devices must remember that radars, like all WWII-era electronics, were made of wired circuit boards connecting dozens of vacuum tubes. Under the best of circumstances, these tubes had an MTBF (mean time between failure) measured in days, if not hours. To make things worse, physical shock could cause the failure of a tube or loosen one in its socket, requiring every tube to be examined and reseated. The maintenance of these devices in battle required as much luck as skill.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“The Japanese were aware that there was a tendency among these young men to close their eyes just before the crash, a very human reaction to the situation. They were repeatedly exhorted to keep their eyes open and to continue aiming their aircraft to the last moment. It is impossible to forget that these were very young men on both sides of this story.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“The importance of ships employing these optimum tactics is illustrated by the fact that only 29 percent of the dives on ships using the proper tactics, as defined above, were successful whereas 47 percent of the dives were successful on ships using other than these tactics.14”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“The kamikaze pilots had forced the Allies to pay a much higher price than they might have otherwise paid to retake the Philippines, but they did not buy the Emperor or the Japanese one moment of relief from the relentless Allied advance.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“To the Japanese, this was not only a reasonable rate of exchange, it was the basis for a sustainable campaign, one that would bring better results than any other available tactic.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat