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The editing seemed sloppy. When I was growing up, my dad never volunteered any information about that day, and answered my questions about it with great reluctance and only in a very general way. My dad, now in his 80's, served aboard the Bunker Hill and survived that awful day. But they also profoundly awe the reader with tales of sacrifice and heroism, of devotion to duty and devotion to one's shipmates. It is written as if it was hurriedly thrown together. The heart-wrenching accounts, coupled with graphic photographs of dead sailors, explain my dad's recurring nightmares.
That image haunted me for years, and I now know that it haunted him too. Only once did he mention a specific incident associated with the attack--the image of dead pilots stacked like cordwood in the burned-out briefing compartment. My dad went on to serve for 26 years and three wars. I enlisted in the Navy on the same day he retired. I grew up in the shadow of the USS Bunker Hill. Since my own retirement, I have been a voracious reader of the naval campaign in the Pacific, always on the lookout for references to the USS Bunker Hill. I recently found and read a copy of "Danger's Hour."Reading the first half of the book is like walking around with a pebble in your shoe.
Some of the paragraphs are disjointed and repetitive. There are several factual errors, mostly of a trivial nature but irritating nonetheless to a Navy man. It was the USS Bunker Hill, long-since decommissioned and being used as some sort of electronics laboratory. It was only recently that I found out that recalling the attack on the Bunker Hill gave him nightmares. It almost seems as if the author was trying to hurry through the first half of the book in order to get to the real heart of the matter -- the first-person accounts.The last half of the book -- the first-person accounts -- are what makes this book a good read.
A couple of years later, as I was flying in to North Island Naval Air Station, I noticed an Essex-class carrier tied up at the north end of the island. She has since been scrapped. It fills in the gaps of a story that my dad was reluctant to discuss. It draws a clear distinction, for me at least, in the concept of self-sacrifice as an element of national policy (the Japanese kamikazi pilots) and the individual sacrifice of American sailors for country, ship and shipmates.
His final chapter was a fitting conclusion that described how the central characters, Japanese and American, lived their lives after the war. Danger's Hour is undoubtedly the best book I've read on the subject. I have read at least 100 books about the war in the Pacific. I gave the book to a friend that was a Viet Nam carrier pilot. The author's perspective was unique because he explored the Japanese point of view as well as the American side of the story. I am a retired fire fighter and found his narratives about the choking smoke, searing heat, and decreased visibility below decks to be riveting. He said he couldn't put it down. Don't miss reading this book.
It is unfortunate that the author butchered such a tragic story, and made it read like fiction. But then I decided that to read the book again would be a torture that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
I have one guess as to why this book even got published, which a glance at the author's name may reveal. The story seems to be cut and pasted many times over.
Never has a book angered me through its blatant errors, both grammatical and historical. As I was reading it, and as I got close to finishing it, I became tempted to reread it with a highlighter in hand - to mark every grammatical error and historical fallacy.
With many elements of the story being repeated, it was hard to follow. Words really cannot even begin to describe this book.
Truly, there are too many fallacies within this book to even begin to write about them. Even giving it one star is more than I would recommend.
A diagram showing the air vent system would have made the book more understandable. I agree with many of the other people, that many of "facts" are wrong.--I had a problem understanding "where" the air vents were.On the island. Port or starb. How big were the air vents.--Maybe a diagram so we can compare the placement of the "air vents" on this carrier to other newer carriers.--It seems almost a glory or glamorization (sp). of the Kamikaze suicide.--The sub -story is the flaw in the ship's design (the air vent).The real story (the take away) is what it took to save the ship.--While you read it, you have to ask yourself if you would stay at your station (and die a horrible death) so that your shipmates would live.end
No. On the Corsair, the landing gear struts were deliberately designed to be as short as possible, in order to fit within the chord of the wing, allowing the landing gear to sweep straight back rather than folding up in the wing and limiting the placement of wing guns and ammunition. The author later says that the oleos had a tendency to snap on hard landings. I will never again waste time even looking at anything written by this author and I will be extremely reluctant to put any faith in anything else put out by this publisher. 5) The British did not receive "defective" Corsairs. Kennedy clearly demonstrates that he doesn't know a thing about the planes that were crucial to much of the success in the Pacific War, and he has absolutely no grasp of the design concepts involved. They didn't absorb enough of the landing shock, and thus bounced the plane. It is an absolute waste of money.
1) The first mistake is in telling the reader that the Corsair was the first American aircraft to exceed 400 mph. Page 107 of the book is all you need to know. The landing gear stroke problem had been fixed after a month of trial and error, adjusting the ratio of oil and air. Even more important than the landing gear problems was the issue of the wing tip stall that made the port wing drop suddenly upon landing, after cutting engine power. In fact, most of the Corsairs were assigned to the Marine Corps in a land-based role and they first landed in Guadalcanal, not Bougainville, in Feb 1943, with VMF-124.
Mr. Their Corsairs were modified with clipped wings that were 8" shorter on the ends, so that they could be folded up aboard British carriers with armored steel decks that forced a reduction in the height of their hangar bays. This isn't just sloppy research--this is pure ignorance, undeserving of publication.3) The bouncing experienced on the decks of aircraft carriers, during intial carrier qualification trials, was not at all related to the length of the oleos but because the dual air and oil compensation system on the struts had been set improperly, making the gear too stiff and rigid. In fact, the oleos on the F4U were much LESS likely to snap, when compared to other contemporary designs, and that was one of the main ideas behind making it so small--so that they WOULDN'T be prone to such breakage. No, it was first SINGLE-ENGINED fighter to do so; the twin-engined P-38 Lightning had already done it.2) The author says the main problem with the aircraft was that the "wheel struts (oleos) were extra long to hold its gigantic propeller off of the deck." Struts are landing gear struts to which the wheels are attached, not part of the wheel.
Instead, he misinterprets the aircraft, its design, its deployment, and its combat history, displaying absolute ignorance of the subject matter.My purpose in ordering the book was precisely to research more details about the use of the Corsair against the Kamikaze, a pivotal element in that stage of the war. The wing tip stall was also corrected with a field modification of a triangular-shaped piece of wood, initially duct-taped to the leading edge of the starboard wing. It was the British who figured out how to approach a carrier at sea with the Corsair, and they passed that information to the Americans. Even a cursory reading of the cheapest book on the Corsair would have disabused him of such notions. This was due, in part, because of the torque of the massive R-2800 engine. If the Corsair had not been present on carriers later in the war, the Kamikaze threat would have been even more severe, with the loss of even more men and ships.
In just two paragraphs, the author completely mischaracterized the entire history of the development, combat deployment and use of one of the most iconic and legendary aircraft of WW II, the Chance Vought F4U Corsair. The author seems to know nothing of this and fails to educate his readers. This was later replaced by a metal spoiler on the production line. This author did nothing to honor all of those who contributed to getting both Navy and Marine Corsairs back aboard American carriers.
Both the author and the publisher of this book should be ashamed. That implies that this was the first assignment of the Corsair on land. The INVERTED gull-wing (not gull-wing, as described) wing design of the plane was what allowed the struts to be small and sturdy, while simultaneously allowing the 13'4" prop to clear the deck of a ship--or a land-based runway, for that matter. I was so stunned by the incredible lack of research, or even the most basic knowledge of naval and Marine aviation in the Pacific, I closed the book, tossed it aside and didn't bother to look at another page.
The initial tail wheel design was too high, to help the large wing flaps clear the deck, and the tailhook was not long enough to engage the arresting wire when the tail was high. If power was re-applied too quickly, it tended to roll the plane inverted, with an upside-down crash on the deck, giving the plane the nickname "Ensign Eliminator." 4) The author tells you that the planes were removed from Navy carrier decks and sent to Bougainville. When I received my copy of this book in the mail, I immediately zoomed in on the entry for the Corsair, on page 107. There should be a price to pay for putting out a product this poor.
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