Highly recommended

[John Beaman]

If this title has been previous commented on, I apologize.

John Lundstrom previously wrote First Team, a history of the first 6 months of the Pacific war from the Naval VF squadrons. This covered the period from Pearl Harbor through the Midway campaign. His newest volume, First Team And the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942, is a follow-on to that. It is an outstanding book and history as it should be written. He covers, day by day, the operations of USN fighters and VS and VB squadrons from the inception of the campaign to the end of actual naval operations, per se. It also covers the USMC operations and even the USAAF to a small degree. All the major battles and air actions are detailed to the nth degree, even linking names from both sides when they met, fought and shot each other down. Yet, it is still a good narrative and not just dry writing. Two stunning items also emerge: first the number of Bettys that were claimed, heavily damaged, but made it back to base. This sorta puts paid the old name that even the IJN pilots called it: "Type 1 lighter". Second the gross overclaiming by fighter pilots of both sides: if the data is accurate, the overclaiming/crediting is on the nature of 3/4/5 to 1. To his credit, Lundstrom makes no judgment on this.

Great reading!