Tumult In The Clouds: A Tale of Carrier War in the Pacific

Tumult in the Clouds, A Tale of Carrier War in the Pacific, portrays the unique war fought long ago on the vast battlefield of an isolated ocean. Here the opposing navies learn in bloody action to replace the old battleship line with fast aircraft carriers. The action zooms in on Clay Hunt, a young aviator, who enters the war flying an obsolescent torpedo plane at Midway, where he learns at first hand of the flaws of the American torpedo and the impediments to a combined air group attack. He is aboard the carrier Hornet when she is sunk in the battles for Guadalcanal, and his squadron participates in the fight to prevent the Japanese from bringing reinforcements down the “Slot” to attack the marines on the island. Later, Clay is central to the first use of carrier night fighters, the “Black Panthers,” off Tarawa. He ends facing the atom bomb, Fat Man, a name he first met when he and his friends saw The Maltese Falcon and debated the meaning of lives that had no heroes and no sustaining values except professionalism.