Supremacy at Sea: Task Force 58 and the Central Pacific Victory [Paperback]

The gripping account of the U.S. Navy’s fast carrier force—and how its Central Pacific campaign in 1944 marked the achievement of American naval supremacy
 
Task Force 58 was World War II’s most powerful battle fleet. Made up in mid-1944 of sixteen aircraft carriers, over a thousand combat aircraft, and an armada of escorts, it was vital to victory over Japan.
 
In this compelling account, Evan Mawdsley charts the 3,500-mile dash of the “Big Blue Fleet” across the Central Pacific in the first six months of 1944, overwhelming enemy opposition and transforming the nature of naval warfare. The Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944 crushed the enemy’s naval air force and secured war-winning air bases in the Mariana Islands. Mawdsley examines the elements of the rapidly assembled force—ships, planes, and 100,000 officers and men—as well as the advanced bases and fleet train that provided such astounding mobility.
 
Task Force 58’s campaign marked the achievement of naval supremacy by the United States, a status it maintains to this day.“Supremacy at Seathrillingly chronicles the westward surge against Japanese-held island groups by the U.S. Navy’s new armada of aircraft carriers and their escorts during the brief period between late 1942 and late 1944. . . . A clear, crisp narrative of one of the most impressive and victorious naval campaigns of modern times.”—Paul Kennedy,Wall Street Journal

“[Mawdsley] has produced an important, insightful book about the most powerful naval force in history, and the battle that ushered in ‘a new global era of sea power.’”—Saul David,The Telegraph

“The author analyzes the rise of [the] navy through . . . the introduction of new carriers; the development of new aircraft to fly off those carriers and the pilots to fly them; and ml3n