The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway

The First Team by Lundstrom is the finest tribute to the WWII Naval aviator in the Pacific theater of war that I have ever read. The book’s focus is the carrier engagements of the War in the Pacific starting with Pearl Harbor and ending with Midway. It includes the detail of every raid and carrier movement in between including the battle of Coral Sea and the Doolittle raid on mainland Japan.Lundstrom does not delve into politics or motivation for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nor does he spend much time analyzing grand strategy from the joint chiefs in Washington or in Tokyo for that matter. His focus is the carrier war.After an aviator dies Lundstrom typically devotes a few sentences to summarize the aviator’s naval career. At times the book actually serves as a tribute to aviators from both navies as Lundstrom also includes the thoughts and actions of several of the Nipon’s most notable pilots.The first naval aviator to die in WWII was a carrier pilot trying to land at Pearl Harbor a day or so after the battle. In spite of having his running lights on and landing gear down he was brought down by friendly fire. This was the first naval aviator shot down by friendly fire and certainly not the last. In fact, I think the edgy troops at Pearl may have shot down the first three carrier planes in a row that tried to land. The book is jam packed with stories of fratricide. Also, I think more US aircraft were lost due to accidents either because of the weather, numerous equipment malfunction such as debris from the cemented self-sealing gas tanks clogging fuel lines, ditching due to lack of fuel because of bad homing devices or radio failure, friendly fire (sometimes from their own ships!!!), bouncing off the deck and missing the tail hook etc. then were ever shot down by the Japanese.Our devastator torpedo planes were slow and our torpedoes rarely worked. This I knew. However, I didn’t realize what a dog the Grumman F4F Wildcat was compared to the Zero. The Wildcat was slow, heavy, and had a very limited practical range. The Navy knew they had problems with the Wildcat fighter in terms of speed, range, and maneuverability. Also, they knew they needed more fighters on a carrier and that folding wings would allow for this. So they came out with a new model – the F4F-4 – which was 900 pounds heavier than the 3 and 3A. The added weight was due to several factors including the extra two machine guns that the US Navy did not ask for. So even though the latest fighter was more of a dog then the previous version of the Wildcat fighter, the fact that they could fold the wings allowed for the carriers to increase the number of fighters from 18 to 27 before Midway and finally 27 to 36 after Midway.So how did the US Navy win? The Japanese planes had no armor and lacked self-sealing gas tanks. The Japanese Naval aviators called them “lighters.” Also, the Grumman had 4-6, devastating 50 caliber Browning machine guns, armor, and self-sealing gas tanks and tactical strategies such as the Thatch weave and gunnery practice with deflective fire.The book contains several detailed maps and diagrams to help understand movements and formations. The maps in the addition I have could stand to be a little larger so it is hard to make out the details without a magnification. The book also contains several appendices entitled the Making of a Fighter Pilot, Fundamentals of Ariel Fixed Gunnery, the Thatch Weave, Japanese Combat Tactics, and finally a list of all the US Naval Aviators.This book was recommended by a salesperson in the Renaissance book store located in the Milwaukee Billy Mitchel airport. This is the best bookstore in any airport on the planet. The salesman (whose name escapes me) was probably the best military historian on the Pacific war I have ever met. He also knew his Civil War history. Anyway, he recommended The First Team by Lundstrom and Silent Victory by Clay Blair. The First Team Part II which covers the Guadalcanal campaign is on order. So is Silent Victory. Stop in this bookstore if you have a chance.

The First Team is the work of Pacific War researcher and historian John Lundstrom, first published in 1984. As the subtitle indicates, it covers "Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway." The main focus is upon the VFs (carrier fighter squadrons), although coverage is also given to the dive bomber and torpedo squadrons. The narrative takes on the form of a diary, where we follow these fighter squadrons in their daily travails as they fly and fight off the decks of Enterprise, Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet and Saratoga during the six months following Pearl Harbor. One thing that impresses the reader right away is the hazardous nature of flight operations aboard a carrier. There seems to be as many operational mishaps, often fatal, as there are deaths in combat. Especially shocking was the accidental death of a veteran pilot aboard Yorktown as she sortied for Midway.Having long been interested in the Pacific War, I was familiar with the overall flow of events from Pearl Harbor through Midway; however, most sources expend the greater part of their energy on the big carrier battles of Coral Sea and Midway, and mention lesser events only in passing. In First Team, Lundstrom sheds light on these other events mentioned only briefly or not at all by other authors. To name only a few, there is the disastrous fly-in to Oahu by Enterprise's VF-6 the evening of Dec 7, 1941, the action off Bougainville on Feb 20, 1942, where fighters from Lexington took on the Japanese Bettys out of Rabaul, and, something that has always intrigued me: the failure of the Hornet air group to locate Nagumo's carriers the morning of June 4, 1942 at Midway.Lundstrom is an indefatigable researcher and has not only documented in detail the actions of the U.S. Navy carrier air groups during the time in question, but also from the perspective of their opponents, the Japanese. By combining the sources of both sides, he is able to describe in detail the aerial combats of this period, no mean feat given the natural tendency toward exaggeration of pilots' claims and the fast pace of air-to-air combat. Also well documented is the evolution of the F4F Wildcat, with all its plusses and minuses vis-à-vis the Japanese Zero, and the development of air combat tactics such as the Thach weave.First Team is a must-read for aficionados of Pacific War air combat. Nowhere else will you get the level of detailed explanation of this most critical period, during which the balance of dominance swung from the IJN to the USN in the Pacific. Much later in the war, the U.S. could send out a dozen or more fleet carriers together at once, and darken the sky with hundreds of Corsairs and Hellcats to crush an already-depleted IJN air force. But before that time could arrive, it was these stalwart early carrier pilots, already in service as the war began, flying their humble but sturdy Wildcats off the decks of the prewar carriers that turned the tide against the most skilled and experienced navy fliers in the world, those of the IJN.

日米の報告書はフォーマットが違う上日本は損失原因について判明したことは書く、怪しいことは書かないアメリカは損失原因が多少怪しくても何か具体的に答えを出そうとする傾向を感じます本書では原因不明ばかりの日本側もできる限りリサーチしている感はありますが今ほど他国の情報にアクセスできる時期で無かったゆえに過去に丸誌などに掲載された回想などと「何に撃墜されたか」が大きく食い違った判定になっている部分が見受けられ全数が少ないためその影響が多く出てしまっている節があるのが残念です100機の内1機が判定間違ってましたであれば1％ですが10機のうち1機だと10％ですまた、勉学やスポーツあらゆる勝敗が出ることに対してそうですが空戦は優位なら必ず勝てるわけでなく勝ったり負けたりを繰り返し大きく見れば傾向が出るという視点が欠けているのではないかという感じがぬぐえません。例えば1944年1月の零戦の対戦闘機戦闘は2倍いかない位に米戦闘機に負けてます（106：65）がその期間内でも連続5、6回では米戦闘機に約2倍勝っているという期間はあるのです限られたサンプル数で全体像を把握する推定統計においては結果が拮抗するほど生じうる誤差は大きく、サンプル数が少ないほど不正確になります選挙が圧勝であれば全然開票がされてなくてもすぐ当確が出て互角だと開票が進んでもなかなか当確が出ないのもそれが理由です読み物としては面白いと思いますが、続編を入れてもサンプル数はかなり少なくましてこの本の範囲で分析を出そうというのは無理があるとしか言いようがありません仮にこの本と続編を正とすると米軍のキルレシオは数字はもちろん好転したか悪化したか傾向すら全くあってないことになるので、どの程度意味のある数字かを考えてほしいところです私の評価としては、「ガダルカナル戦を扱った続編と共に読み物としておすすめ、ただ、この程度のサンプル数で判定も確実でないのに分析の真似ごとをしようとしたのは無意味」です。

サブタイトル通り1941年12月の真珠湾攻撃から翌年6月のミッドウェー海戦までの期間における米海軍戦闘機隊の戦いを詳細に描いた著作。メインテーマは勿論米F4Fと日本の零戦隊との対決で、中でも珊瑚海海戦やミッドウェー海戦での両者の激突は圧巻である。性能面で零戦隊に劣ったF4F戦闘機隊が如何にして零戦と戦い、これを打ち破っていったか。それは本書を読み進むにつれて明らかになってくるだろう。本書では米側の状況だけではなく日本側の戦果・損害についても克明に記されていることである。従って本書を読み進んでいくにつれて個々の空戦における日米両軍の戦果と損害を把握することができる。日本語の著作でもこれほど克明に日本側の損害について記された著作は知らない。まさに日米航空戦の決定版いえる著作である。日米空母の戦いや零戦、ワイルドキャット等に興味を持つ方であれば、必読の著作だと言える。