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    A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight
    A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight
    A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight
    Audiobook15 hours

    A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight

    Written by Robert J. Mrazek

    Narrated by Dick Hill

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    One of the great untold stories of World War II finally comes to light in this thrilling account of the members of Torpedo Squadron Eight and their heroic efforts in helping an outmatched U.S. fleet win critical victories at Midway and Guadalcanal. These thirty-five American men-many flying outmoded aircraft-changed the course of history, going on to become the war's most decorated naval air squadron, while suffering the heaviest losses in U.S. naval aviation history.

    Robert J. Mrazek paints moving portraits of the men in the squadron and exposes a shocking cover-up that cost many lives. Filled with thrilling scenes of battle, betrayal, and sacrifice, A Dawn Like Thunder is destined to become a classic in the literature of World War II.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 8, 2008
    ISBN9781400178797
    A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight
    Author

    Robert J. Mrazek

    Robert J. Mrazek is the author of the novels The Deadly Embrace, which won the W.Y. Boyd Prize for Excellence in Military Fiction from the American Library Association, Unholy Fire, and Stonewall’s Gold, winner of the Michael Shaara Prize for Best Civil War Novel of 1999. He is also the author of two works of nonfiction, To Kingdom Come, and A Dawn Like Thunder.

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    Reviews for A Dawn Like Thunder

    4/5

    38 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Truly a riveting account. It was like being there and personally getting to know the brave men who served. Mr Hill did an excellent job with the narration of this dramatic piece of history. Being true to factual history, I learned that the US navy took heavy losses in men and equipment during some devastating battles against a formidable foe with weather and human error causing disaster as well as sparing lives. I am in awe of the men who braved withering anti-aircraft and Japanese Zero fire to press on with their missions despite using outmoded planes. It makes you wonder if you would be as brave flying straight into a "hornets nest" of Zeros and AA fire as they usually did. It was very hard to pause the e-book and stop listening, in order to get my work done! Would love to see a movie based on this book.
    • 5/5
      One part of this story, I already knew well: the sacrifice of "Torpedo 8" at the Battle of Midway, where obsolete, "sitting duck" torpedo bombers went in and effectively pulled away Japanese fighters, allowing American dive bombers to rip the heart out of the Japanese carrier fleet a few minutes later. What I did not know was the full details about why the USS Hornet's air groups performed so poorly at the battle, nor that "Torpedo 8" went on to play a crucial role in the air war over Guadalcanal a few months later, and in fact became one of the most highly decorated air units in American service, even though it was not in combat for very long, at least from a calendar standpoint. Very much worth reading if you are interested in this phase of the Pacific War.
    • 5/5
      Dramatic, fast- moving story of the Navy and Marine Corps war at Midway and in the Solomons, particularly Guadalcanal.
    • 3/5
      Like the Light Brigade at Balaclava and the 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn, Torpedo Squadron 8 achieved immortality through a shattering defeat. On June 4, 1942, fifteen of the squadron’s planes took off from the aircraft carrier Hornet, and six more from Midway Island, to attack an oncoming Japanese fleet. Twenty of the twenty-one planes were shot down, and more than thirty-five men killed, without inflicting damage on the enemy. A Dawn Like Thunder tells the story of the doomed attack at great length and in gripping detail, but it is not solely, or even primarily, about that story. It is a book about the first year of the Pacific War—uneasy peace, the shock of Pearl Harbor, desperate defensive actions, and the beginning of an organized counter-offensive—seen through the eyes of a small group of junior officers and enlisted men. It pays careful attention to describing the experience of combat and the larger strategic tapestry of the war, but the men are always at the forefront of the story.Author Robert J. Mrazek profiles the men of Torpedo 8 with obvious respect and affection, but without sentimentality. They exhibit determination, resilience, and extraordinary courage, but also fear, boredom, anger, and jealousy. The squadron’s second commander, Harold “Swede” Larsen, is portrayed as a ferocious warrior but a terrible leader, who comes within inches—on several occasions—of being shot by his own men. Far up the chain of command, meanwhile, senior officers’ blunders repeatedly put the squadron in unnecessary peril, and set the stage for the debacle at Midway. The Second World War (“Greatest Generation” hagiography aside) was won by flawed, scruffy, imperfect human beings doing the best they could at a terrible job. A Dawn Like Thunder is a compelling look at one small group of them.
    • 4/5
      A Dawn Like Thunder was a really engaging, fast-moving, personal war narrative. It was well written and well researched, and it was the kind of book that made the reader feel, at the end, a little closer to the people who were there--made me feel like I understood much better what it was like to be there.I really liked that Mrazek wrote the charachters as they were, warts and all. Often in relating the stories of true heroes authors tend to gloss over their faults and make them out to be superhuman. The men of TS8 were certainly heroes, but they were men, just as flawed as all men. Even the Homeric heroes were acknowledged to be deeply flawed and human characters--I really liked that Mrazek honored their humanity by writing their characters as they really were, particularly with the commander, a racist, abusive, horrible leader, but a man with a fierce warrior spirit that led him to true heroism on many occasions.I couldn't give the book more stars, though, because I felt it was a little sparse on the 30000 foot view. This was intentional, I admit, and a book on the set-piece battle that ignores the human experience is even more flawed, I believe, but the very very best war narratives like Rick Atkinson's "An Army at Dawn" or Ambrose's "Citizen Soldiers" gave more context. Mrazek fleshed out the Solomon Islands campaign more than the Battle of Midway (perhaps because it took place over a much longer period of time) but I felt that I would have liked a little more of the strategic and higher-level-command perspective along with the wonderful personal stories to have been able to learn more of the academic "military history."That said, that was not the book that was written, and it was excellent for what it was, and I recommend it to anyone.