General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War

The commanding general of the Allied Air Forces of the Southwest Pacific wrote a personal report, using as his framework the diary he kept throughout the war years. General Kenney was probably the most popular commander of American forces during World War Il, and readers will understand why his leadership and humanity inspired such courage and loyalty among the fliers of the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces. A daring, gifted, remarkably successful military leader, General Kenney pioneered the tactics and strategy of a new kind of warfare in a dozen brilliant ways, perfecting the dangerous skills of skip-bombing, low-altitude strafing, and parafrag bombing. He improvised breathtaking feats of airborne war and executed them flawlessly. Enormously readable and unmistakably authentic, his story began in the dark days of July 1942 when the Japanese were at Australia's threshold. Step by step, island by island, across the incredible distances of the Pacific, they were pushed back, though they usually had more men and planes and guns, and always had a shorter lifeline, than the forces under MacArthur.--From publisher description.