Semper Fi in the Sky: The Marine Air Battles of World War II

by Gerald Astor

Here, one of America's most popular military historians re-creates, using their own moving and powerful voices, the true stories of the U.S. Marine pilots who flew the Allies to victory in World War II. These riveting accounts recreate conflicts ranging from the Marines' gallant defense of Wake Island, where Captain Henry "Baron" Elrod destroyed two enemy planes before joining the fight on the ground, earning a posthumous Medal of Honor in the last-ditch attempt to stave off the Japanese, to the Battle of Midway and Guadalcanal. Running the gamut from Second Lieutenant Alvin Jensen's single-handed destruction of twenty-four grounded Japanese aircraft on Kahili to Lieutenant John W. Leaper’s sawing off a Kamikaze’s tail with his propeller over Okinawa, these thrilling oral histories of the Pacific war's air battles bring them to life in all their terror and triumph. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

Genres: World War II, History, Aviation, Military Fiction

Paperback

First published November 29, 2005

About the author

Gerald Morton Astor, a native of New Haven, grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y. After his Army service in the Second World War, he received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. He was the picture editor of Sports Illustrated in its early years and worked as an editor for Sport magazine, Look, The Saturday Evening Post and Time.

Besides his accounts of the Battle of the Bulge and the air war in Europe, Mr. Astor wrote of World War II in books including “The Greatest War: Americans in Combat, 1941-1945,” “June 6, 1944: The Voices of D-Day,” “Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II” and biographies of Maj. Gen. Terry Allen, a leading combat commander in both North Africa and Europe, and the Nazi medical experimenter Dr. Josef Mengele.

He also wrote “The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in the Military” and “Presidents at War,” an account of presidents’ evolving assertion of authority to take military action in the absence of a Congressional declaration of war.

Mr. Astor edited “The Baseball Hall of Fame 50th Anniversary Book” and wrote a biography of the heavyweight champion Joe Louis, “And a Credit to His Race.” He collaborated with Anthony Villano, a former F.B.I. agent who recruited informants from the Mafia, in “Brick Agent.”

Reviews

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some issues with the writing here and there, but the tale of Marine Aviators during WWII is compelling enough as it is. My biggest complaint is that there seems to be a huge gap in the contributions of Marine aviation between the invasion/conquest of Wake Island and the Battle of the Coral Sea.

[David Engel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book interesting and informative. As it covered Marine aviation throughout WWII instead of focusing on a campaign, battle or unit, it was less engaging as stories of particular events can be. I prefer closer focus on units, such as in 'Band of Brothers', but this story of marine aviation was well done.

[John Zemp · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite authors...i found it a throughly fun read....

[Christian J · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was okay. Less ground talk, and more air, please!

[Brad Nerkowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Semper Fi in the Sky

Semper Fi in the Sky is a non-fiction book published by Gerald Astor in 2005 in New York City. Gerald Astor is an acclaimed war historian who uses vivid accounts from veterans of the war.
In this book it covers the formation of the air corps division of the marines. Coming after the army and navy air corps the marines in the air corps often flew outdated planes handed down from the later two and also the air force. Of all the outdated air craft they flew the most dreaded was the notorious F2A-3 Brewster buffalo which was quoted as “ flying coffins” and one man said “If a man is set to fly a F2A-3 you might as well consider him dead before he even takes off.”. Later some f4f wildcats were introduced as well as f4u corsairs. The setting of this book is the pacific theater in early to mid world war two. The conflict in this book is the fight for freedom against the Japanese empire, however this book gets into more personal accounts involving shelling from battleships, bombings, & strafing runs.
It was very hard to find the theme of this book since it is non-fiction and does not follow one single person. The best theme I could find is that no matter how horrible and depressing life gets it will always get better no matter what. This is represented by three statements that say “on Guadalcanal supplies for rations were low and you’d often get hungry.”. Another one states that “almost every night there was either a shelling, bombing, or strafing run done on Henderson field.”. The next one says “on Guadalcanal you’d only get 3 hours of sleep at best because the warships fighting off the coast would keep you awake continuously.”.
The author of this book uses firsthand accounts through interviews with real world war two marine pilots. Audiences that may be interested in this book are people interested in flight and the history of the air force, veterans of the pacific theater of world war two, and those interested in marine history. The author’s writing style is very descriptive with many quotations from marine air corps veterans. This book is similar to Guadalcanal written by Irving Werstein in that it is very descriptive and is based on operations in and around --Guadalcanal. This quote I have chosen to use to show Gerald Astor’s writing style” the shellings were terrible they began right off the bat when we arrived. On the 12th, the Japanese navy sailed through the slot and sat there for a little after nine o’ clock in the evening until four in the morning with no let up, I can still hear the screams of men getting hit. We were in an impact area, and hadn’t dug in too well. We were lying with our shoulders flush with the ground.” page 115.
my relationship with the author is we are both passionate about preserving the history of our fighting men and women, and being able to have even a meager comprehension of what they had gone through. This book affected me with the accounts from the veterans the author used because it made me realize how much worse it could be. Many of the men on Guadalcanal were hungry and being shelled, shot at, strafed, and bombed with little or no shelter. I did not enjoy this book as well as I have enjoyed other books on the same topic since this was hard to follow due to the many different accounts by many different people. I would not recommend this book to a friend, however the information was good just not the format.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A history of United States Marine Corps aviation from the Wright brothers through World War II. It discusses many early Marine aviators as well as developments by the Marine Corps. The majority of the book is devoted to World War II. It is easy to read.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of USMC pilot accounts from across the Pacific war. It's a good book, written in oral history style with a caption or two wrong (but I'm not even sure how important overall or who does the captions for that matter)Good USMC Pacific war air war over view.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good history of Marine Aviation and shows what true Heros are made of.