Recognizing that it would be impossible in a single volume to discuss in detail the entire assault on Rabaul, Gamble closed his work with a chapter about the successful interception and killing of Japanese
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto by United States Army Air Force Lockheed P-38 pilots in April 1943.
His discussion of the weakness of Japan's strategic planning in the Pacific and its naval deficiencies in general is also convincing, though his relative lack of regard for
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto may surprise many readers.
Highlights include an aircraft converted into a B-25B bomber like those used on Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle's April 1942 Tokyo Raid (the conversion was overseen by two Doolittle Raiders); a uniform tunic of
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of the Pearl Harbor attack; the helmet and bullet-damaged goggles of Japanese air ace Saburo Sakai; a rubber terrain map of Iwo Jima, used to prepare the US invasion of the island; and a destroyer's combat information center, still exuding the aroma of mid-20th-century electronics.
This raid was so significant that it was studied carefully by
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while planning his attack on Pearl Harbor thirteen months later.
It wasn't until much later that it was discovered that
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commanding the Combined Fleet, had done just what Spruance feared he would do--try to compensate for Nagumo's dreadful defeat by sending a surface formation to meet the American fleet that everyone but Spruance thought should be driving west.
On page 32, in the margin, is a statement "Japanese
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was the Osama Bin Laden of World War II.
Daniel Haulman likens Japanese
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, to the modern terrorist Osama Bin Laden.
No one understood this better than
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the 58-year-old commander of Japan's Combined Fleet.
The attack had been concocted by
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the combined Japanese fleet, to eliminate the American forces at Pearl Harbor in one decisive blow, leaving Japan unimpeded to pursue its military plans in the Pacific.
When Japanese
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Soh Yamamura) asks if Japanese torpedoes can be used against the American fleet at Pearl Harbor; the audience is hardly likely to gasp in shock.
