The Twilight Warriors
by Robert Gandt
Broadway Books, 2010, 385 pages
The battles of Carrier Air Group 10 pilots, assigned to the aircraft carrier
Intrepid (CV-11), are the focus of this history about the Battle of
Okinawa. The title of The Twilight Warriors never gets defined
specifically but seems to refer to the Air Group's Tail End Charlies, named such
since the newest pilots "flew at the tail end of formations, stood at the tail
end of chow lines, and now were catching the tail end of the war."
The pilots in Air Group 10 flew F4U Corsairs and were divided into Fighting
Squadron VF-10, nicknamed the Grim Reapers, and Bomber Fighting Squadron VBF-10.
On March 18, 1945, the F4U Corsair pilots of Air Group 10 from Intrepid
saw their first action in combat over the Japanese mainland. On April 16, 1945,
a kamikaze Zero fighter carrying a 250-kg bomb went through the wooden flight
deck into the hanger deck below where the bomb exploded. The attack killed 8 men
and wounded 21, and 40 warplanes were destroyed. Intrepid had to go back
to San Francisco for repairs and did not return to battle in the Pacific until
early August.
The narrative is fast-paced with short paragraphs, and the focus is on
personal stories told from the viewpoint of men who fought at Okinawa. Many of
the book's 38 chapters cover individual missions of pilots with several
describing how pilots lost their lives or had to ditch in the sea. The end of
the book lists the 30 men from Carrier Air Group 10 who lost their lives during
the Pacific War. Robert Gandt, author of six nonfiction books before this one,
served as a naval officer and aviator, so he uses natural language to describe
the air battles. There is a glossary that defines technical terms. Gandt also is co-author of the 2008 book titled
Intrepid: The Epic Story of America's
Most Legendary Warship, so The Twilight Warriors can be
considered a follow-up book with more details and stories about Air Group10
aboard Intrepid. The
book is very well-researched with end notes and six pages of references
including a listing of over 15 veterans, most from Air Group 10, who were
interviewed for this history. The center section contains eight pages of
historical photos.
The exact scope or topic of the book never gets clarified in advance. Even
after reading the book, its scope is difficult to summarize. In the
Acknowledgments section at the end, the author writes that at the heart of this
story are real-life heroes of Carrier Air Group 10, but the book contains many
other stories not directly related to Intrepid or Air Group 10. For
example in Chapter 31 on April 16, 1945, Intrepid gets knocked out of the
war for four months when a kamikaze aircraft and its bomb crashes through the
flight deck, but the book goes on for another seven chapters about various
topics such as kamikaze attacks on various American ships during the Battle of
Okinawa and the ground battle on the island of Okinawa that did not end until
June 22. In another example of unclear scope of the book, several chapters cover
the Japanese side of the suicide mission toward Okinawa of the giant battleship
Yamato and nine escort ships, but it is not clear why this event gets so
much coverage on the Japanese side although Corsairs from Intrepid did
participate in Yamato's sinking.
Even though much information gets presented about Japan's kamikaze attacks
during the Battle of Okinawa, the book focuses almost entirely on the thinking
of Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, who led Japan's air attacks starting in February
1945, based on his diary rather than exploring the
psychology of the kamikaze special attack pilots who carried out suicide
missions. Even with the American pilots of Air Group 10, readers learn little
about their personalities and feelings about their missions, partly due to the
sheet number of pilots who are introduced.
Although not a comprehensive history of the Battle of Okinawa, this book
describes key events in both the naval and land battles. The highlights of this
history are the personal stories of missions and battles of Air Group 10 pilots,
but much other information, most not directly related, must be gone through to
get to these accounts. |
