Supremacy at Sea: Task Force 58 and the Central Pacific Victory Hardcover – May 14, 2024

Concur with David’s Review.. You had better read Buell, Potter, Morison & Toll to understand this book.

Good book. This book is not a war adventure story but a telling of the different factors that came together to produce the dominant American carrier fleet in 1944. Also Japanese weakness that added to their essential weakness.

Well researched and documented, but adds nothing to other recent Pacific War books. A lot of documentation and command structure that would appeal to Navy historians but not to the average reader

The great US Navy Task Force 58 is the subject covering the Central Pacific campaigns from January to June 1944. With background on both the US Navy and late-1942 war situation, the Navy as it began the campaigns across the Central Pacific islands is the focus.The chapters are organized to cover specific campaigns (Flintlock, Forager, etc.), across the months of January thru June 1944, as follows:1 - The Origins of Task Force 582 - Flintlock: TF 58 and the Invasion of the Marshalls, Jan-Feb.1944 (p.38)3 - HAILSTONE: TF 58 Raids Truk, February 19444 - Seven-League Boots: TF 58 raids the Marianas, February 1944 (p. 107)5 - DESECRATE: TF 58 raids Palau, 30-31Marh 19446 - TF 58: The Final Raids, April and May 1944 (p.142)7 - Approaching the Marianas, 1-15Jun 19448 - TF 58 and the Battle of the Philippine Sea (1): Invasion and Air Battle (p.167)9 - TF-58 and the Battle of the Philippine Sea (2): Submarines and the American Air Strike (p.194)10 - Supremacy at SeaThis is followed by two Appendices (Fast Carriers of TF 58 and Japanese Forces and Strategy); Endnotes,Bibliography (p.297) and Index.As the text proceeds across 1944, the author has sub-chapters on a variety of subjects (US Navy Airplanes, focus look at the numbers and types of aircraft on the carriers); Chain of Command; Spruance and Mitscher; and details regarding ships involved in each of the raid's; raid operational losses; etc.In many ways, reading this is like reading Samuel Elliot Morison - author of History of US Naval Operations in World War II - but doing so would take several of his volumes to be read to read what is in SUPREMACY AT SEA. For that reason alone, the book has value (if a LOT of details, that many readers would prefer not to bother with).The maps and detailed charts are extensive and valuable for some. Among the authors conclusions:1 - In 1944 it was the U.S. forces that were on the offensive, and the Japanese that were attempting to hold a defensive perimeter. In the Marianas the Japanese Navy deployed warships and land-based planes to fight what its admirals hoped would be a decisive battle against a carrier fleet covering a major amphibious operation.2 - The hopes that the Imperial Army could hold the islands - or make their capture unacceptably costly for the Americans - even with a lack of local naval power, turned out to be unfounded. Japanese losses on the three islands [i.e., Marianas] were 50,000 men, core forces comprising thirty infantry battalions in two Army divisions..... [p. 222].3 - .....what happened in the near approaches to Japan in 1945 was very different from 1944...and, the reactivated Fifth Fleet took part in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa....The number of US Navy personnel killed in action in the last seven months of the war against Japan was nearly twice that of the twelve months of 1944; losses in 1945 were 9,600 personnel. In the battle after the invasion of Okinawa, some 3,800 American naval personnel were killed, many of them on the thirteen (13) destroyers sunk by kamikazes. [p.227]This is a book that one has to determine what one "wants out of a title" - and that will determine what ones view of SUPREMACY AT SEA is. Some critique it for being too detailed, yet for those interested in carrier warfare history, wargaming, and other reasons, the extensive maps, charts and tables, and text - this is an ideal read. For the benefit of the latter readers - and maybe not the general history reader looking for a book written like Ian W. Toll, John Toland or Rick Atkinson would have written - I offer it up with 5-Stars.RECOMMENDED !!!

This detailed story of the most powerful naval force in history is exhaustive and exhausting. I can picture the author with his detailed research notes deciding to include every single piece of it. The book is at least 50% too long because it includes such minutiae as the names of every fleet oiler and when it was constructed, pilots' names, repetitive narration of fleet procedures, and departures from the book's topic: submarines, battles elsewhere, and "what ifs." It's as if you're driving a high performance car but only concerned with the dials and buttons.Worse, for someone supposedly an expert on the US Navy, the author (who is a professor in Glasgow), makes errors. There is no "Congressional Medal of Honor" in the US. It's the Medal of Honor, which everyone familiar with the military knows. I found that this book's difficulty in slogging through it far outweighed the benefits from reading it.