Pacific Thunder - The US Navys Central Pacific Campaign, August 1943-October 1944 McKelvey Cleaver ThomasPaperback / softback

On October 27 1942, four "Long Lance" torpedoes fired by the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo exploded in the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). Of the pre-war carrier fleet the Navy had struggled to build over 15 years, only three were left: USS Enterprise, which had been badly damaged in the battle of Santa Cruz; the USS Saratoga (CV-3), which lay in dry dock, victim of a Japanese submarine torpedo; and the USS Ranger (CV-4), which was in mid-Atlantic on her way to support Operation Torch.For the American naval aviators licking their wounds in the aftermath of this defeat, it would be difficult to imagine that within 24 months of this event, Zuikaku, the last survivor of the Minutes later, the ship that had launched the Doolitte Raid six months earlier slipped beneath the waves of the Coral Sea.