A6M2/3 Zero-sen: New Guinea and the Solomons 1942 (Dogfight, 10)

The Japanese offensive into the Southwest Pacific in 1942 was built around projecting air power into Allied lines of communication between the United States and Australia. The airfield at Guadalcanal famously was captured by U.S. Marines and turned into a critical U.S. air base. The Japanese base in New Guinea was a different story, as related in this new Osprey Dogfight series book.The Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force (IJNAF) placed Zero-sen fighters at Rabaul in early 1942. The austere base location was actually the easy part. Japanese fighters would have long and difficult flights to fight their Australian, New Zealand, and U.S. opponents in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. As the author explains, the IJNAF was nowhere near as dominant in the region as has often been claimed.The narrative includes lots of first-person accounts of dogfights. The Text has lots of period photographs and modern illustrations and air-battle diagrams. Well recommended to students of the Second World War in the Southwest Pacific.

Like all of this author's works, this book is well researched and documented. This critical corner of the Southwest Pacific has traditionally been not well documented or understood in the US. Beyond the invasion of Guadalcanal the air and sea battles in 1942 and 1943 were a pivotal crossroads of Allied victory in the Pacific. Author Clairingbould has done a masterful job detailing the movements and missions of the Japanese Navy A6M2/3 units in New Guinea and the Solomons in 1942/43. Many new details come to light describing the air battles over Port Moresby, Lae, Guadalcanal and the Solomons. This was a very enjoyable and informative book.

I found this booklet (approximately 80 pages) to be dull reading. Maybe the issue is that I just didn't care for 80 pages of individual pilot combats, which I guess is what "Dogfight' is all about. It describes squadron missions and individual pilot sorties at the tactical level from the Japanese airbases on Rabaul to targets such as Port Moresby in New Guinea and Guadalcanal in the Solomons Islands. There is little on strategic level assessments, such as why the Japanese were even in Rabaul in the first place or why the air missions were executed at all.There is a single map on page 20 showing the location of Rabaul, eastern New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Bismarck Sea and the Solomon Sea. The main Japanese and Allied air fields and islands are indicated. There are no detailed maps of either Rabaul or Port Moresby showing the locations of the referenced airfields. One of my pet peeves is that the booklet mentions islands and placenames that are not indicated in any map.The booklet also uses Japanese air commander titles such as "Hikocho," "Shotaicho, and "Chutaicho" without describing what these terms mean. I think that a "Shotaicho" was the leader of a 3-plane flight and a "Chutaicho" was the leader of a nine-plane Chutai (i.e., three Shotais). It would maybe have been nice if a paragraph had been devoted to describing them, perhaps in Chapter 5 "Art of War."There is considerable discussion on the exaggerated combat claims of enemy planes shot down by both sides, and which have been repeated even today in many histories of the Solomons and New Guinea air battles. Author Claringbould assesses that claims were exaggerated by a factor of 2 to 3, based on records of actual losses by all the air forces involved: Japanese, American, and Australian.Chapter 3 "Path to Combat" (pages 22 - 27) describes life in the Rabaul air bases for the Japanese pilots.