Military Model Scene

Title: British Pacific Fleet 1944-45
Author: Brian Lane Herder
Publisher: Osprey
ISBN: 978-1-4728-5677-7

This is number 3 in the new Fleet series from Osprey, and covers the Royal Navy in the Downfall of Japan at the end of WW2. An 80-page soft-cover book.
The book is split neatly into 2 halves. The first gives us the background and mission of the British Pacific Fleet (BPF), which wasn't formed until November 1944, and which didn't actually go into combat until early 1945, so in the final year of the war. At the heart of the BPF were modern warship, including a group of 5 fleet carriers which all had the benefit of armoured flight decks, unlike their American counterparts. Carriers, escort carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and even the smaller X-craft were all part of the BPF, plus the logistics support train all played their part. The Fighting Power of the fleet is set out, detailing the various ships and their technical factors. It goes on to explain how it was operated, with doctrine & command, intelligence, communications and deception along with the logistics tail and facilities. That leaves the second half of the book to detail the story of the fleet in combat and analysis of their performance. There is the working up period, as the carriers carried out some initial attacks against Japanese facilities such as oil refineries at first, to give the fighting ships some combat experience in the theatre. They moved on to work with the powerful US Navy forces, starting with Operation Iceberg, the assault on Okinawa. They faced the attacks of the Kamikaze, and whole there was some damage, there were no sinkings. Importantly, the BPF represented the British fighting back to those places in the Far East which the Japanese had captured from them earlier in the war. There were clearly some mixed feelings about the British involvement among the senior US Naval commanders, though generally they worked together. Illustrated as ever with some fine artwork, this time by illustrator Paul Wright. There are maps, diagrams showing the positioning of ships of the fleet and of those in the logistics train for refuelling/resupply. These are all in addition to a good selection of archive photographs.
The BPF came into being at the very last stages of the war, but still played an important role of its' own, as explained in the book. An interesting read on a topic I knew little about before reading this one, so another good addition to this new Fleet series.
Thanks to Osprey Publishing for the review copy.

Robin