In preparation and due for publication in January 2012 to mark the 70th Anniversary of the War in the Pacific and in particular the Air War that began just a month before when on December 7th 1941 Japanese Naval Air Forces bombed Pearl Harbor.
This coffee table sized book (A3 Oversize format) of just over 200 pages will feature over 150 strike photos and photo re-creations. Dealing with Pacific Airfields during the period from early 1942 through late 1944 when the Air Forces of the major powers in the Pacific - the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands were pitched in a deadly battle for air superiority over the South-West Pacific Area (SWPA).
This period, which began, for the residents of Australia, with the bombing of Darwin on 19th February 1942, was to last for nearly 3 long years before Japanese air and ground forces were overwhelmed by the Allied forces which drove them back to the Philippines by late 1944.
It was a period characterized by the growing might of air power, a power which was first realized during the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 where the 2 most powerful Navies in the region, the United States and Japan, launched their air fleets of torpedo bombers, dive bombers and fighters to engage in air duels and where the ships of either side were hundreds of nautical miles apart and whose powerful guns were never brought to bare on the enemy.
This was the growing might of air power in the Pacific that would ultimately wrest control of the air from the Japanese, and drive their armed forces back towards the north-west, so placing the South-West Pacific Area of Operations firmly under Allied control.
