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Desert Sailor
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by:
ISBN:
0-7414-0389-7
©2000
Price:
$18.95
Book Size:
5.5'' x 8.5''
, 343 pages
Category/Subject:
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Military
There is no short description available for this title.
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Abstract:
This sailor's memoir leads from the U.S. Navy's peacetime "Pineapple Fleet" in Pearl Harbor to a secret convoy transporting the "Flying Tigers" to Asia. After the disaster at Pearl Harbor, his ship raids Japanese bases in the central Pacific. He watches Doolittle's bombers take off from the Hornet to bomb Tokyo, then proceeds to the carrier air battles of Midway and Santa Cruz. At Guadalcanal he is wounded when his ship sinks. From hospitals in New Zealand he moves to New Guinea, then to a destroyer at Okinawa, shooting at kamikazes. Post-war service in China and Japan round out his story.
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Customer Reviews
Desert Sailor
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04/20/2007
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Reviewer:
Larry Nees
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DESERT SAILOR
By James W. Fitch
Reviewed By Larry W. Nees
This fascinating book begins in the summer of 1941, just before young Jim Fitch, from small town New Mexico, enlisted in the US Navy with his older brother.
The reader is moved easily through the travails of a raw recruit, who always looked to big brother for answers. But, when the two separated the author takes us on a fast rite of passage from carefree young teen, to green Navy boot, and, finally, to salty sailor of the seven seas.
As a crewmember of heavy cruiser, USS Northampton, part of the 1941 so-called “Pineapple Fleet,” there is a carefree Hawaiian summer followed by liberty in the land Down Under, where Aussie folks broaden small town New Mexico horizons.
A stroke of fate, mishap in rough seas, prevented the young sailor’s ship from being tied up in Pearl Harbor on December 7. The day after the Japanese sneak attack USS Northampton eased into the burning harbor. Fitch’s vivid descriptions of the devastation and destruction rained on the US Fleet, are as lucid and intense as any book written on that subject since it happened almost 62 years ago.
His first impression: “Pearl Harbor was wrapped in ungodly quiet ………… I remember hearing only the burbling underwater exhausts of many small craft as they worked at picking up dead sailors.”
Then his poignant account: “Arizona’s tall tripod foremast was pitched forward at a crazy angle, and the boxy foretop dangled high above the drowned void which was left where her forward magazines exploded.”
The next day USS Northampton went back to sea with its young crew certain they were sailing into the jaws of death as a powerful Japanese force awaited them.
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Fitch recalls watching Jimmy Doolittle’s raiders take off to bomb Tokyo in April 1942, as Northampton escorted their aircraft carrier, USS Hornet. He takes the reader on board ship in late 1942 during the terrifying night a Japanese destroyer torpedoed Northampton in the Battle of Tassaforanga. After abandoning the mortally wounded ship, the badly burned young sailor fought for this life throughout the night, surrounded by fiery seas, until being picked up and rescued many hours later.
After a period of rehabilitation he returned to sea duty on various naval vessels, the last a destroyer on terrifying picket duty around Okinawa. Its purpose was to pick off Japanese kamikaze planes or take the hit before they reached larger targets.
This book is a must read for not only naval historians but anyone interested in the trials and tribulations of our young men during those darks and uncertain days of World War II. Young people today could benefit and learn about everyday sacrifices of members of the Greatest Generation, as well as events of that time which have been abandoned in many school history programs today.
DESERT SAILOR is one of those fascinating “can’t-put-it-down” books. The pages seem to have wings and fly by. It gets a two-thumbs up from this corner and likewise from many who have read it.
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