Revenge of the Pearl Harbor Survivors

 Author's Summary

This year we commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. All of the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers survived that assault. The central theme of this article  describes the pivotal role played by those surviving American aircraft carriers in the first year of the war. 

The article also briefly describes all of the Japanese and American aircraft carriers in service at the time and their relative strengths and weaknesses. It reveals the location of all the American carriers at the precise moment of the Pearl Harbor attack and describes their deployment and operations in the year immediately after the raid. 

Thanks to the survival and clever deployment of the carriers in 1942, the United States Navy was able to effectively thwart and delay Japan's military aggression throughout the Pacific despite the tragic loss of many battleships and over 2,400 military personnel on December 7. 

This is also a story of valor and sacrifice as only two of these ships survived that first year. By bravely and stubbornly blunting Japanese thrusts until newly built reinforcements could arrive, the surviving aircraft carriers and their courageous sailors and airmen exacted a true measure of revenge for Pearl Harbor.

MWSA Review

Revenge of the Pearl Harbor Survivors is a short analysis of the naval strategy of both sides, leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and afterwards. The author packs a lot of information in a very few pages and as I am not a expert on this topic, I had to put on my thinking cap to keep up. Aside from an academic assessment of the thinking of the times, there is an examination of the resources available to the admirals in charge.

As a fan of aviation in war or peace, I found the discussion of the respective carrier fleets' effectiveness particularly engaging. Mr. Nevola points out that for all of the symbolic and real successes the Japanese achieved during the attack on Pearl Harbor, they sealed the course of the war to come by failing to destroy the United States Aircraft carriers which were not in port that day. Because of losses incurred on December 7, 1941, the US Navy had to rely on carriers to take the fight to the Japanese homeland. This strategy took into account the remaining resources available to the US and emphasized the growing role of the airplane as a tool of war.

The piece would be of interest to students of the era or to military historians who enjoy debating the "what if's?" of war. This is an e-book that was originally intended to be a long article and it is structured that way. As the information would be useful for academics, novelists, non-fiction writers, and journalists, breaking the book into chapters and creating a table of links to those chapters would make it easier to use in a research capacity.

Reviewed by: Joyce Faulkner (2012)