Product Description

The pilots called themselves the 'Tokyo Club'. It was a simple task to become a member. All you had to do was strap yourself into a heavily loaded P-51 Mustang, take off from Iwo Jima (a postage-stamp sized volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean), fly 650 miles north over the sea - often through monsoon storms - in your single-engined aircraft to Japan, attack a heavily defended target in the vicinity of the enemy's capital city and then turn around and fly home while fretting over your shrinking fuel supply and perhaps battle damage as well. If your gas held out and you were not blown off-course on your return trip, you landed back at 'Iwo' after an eight-hour flight. Do it once and you earned membership in the club. Do it 15 times and you earned a trip home. But make one mistake or have one touch of bad luck, and you had a very good chance of ending up dead.
This book will tell the little-known story of these brave men and their efforts to defeat the aerial forces defending Japan during the final five months of World War 2. Used initially to provide fighter escort for B-29s bombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities, the Iwo Jima-based P-51s enjoyed such success that they were soon called on to make low-level attacks against ground targets in preparation for the invasion of Japan.
The book will cover the three Mustang-equipped Very Long Range fighter groups of the USAAF's Seventh Fighter Command - the 15th, 21st and 506th FGs - based on Iwo Jima with an action-packed text, many rare photos drawn from private collections and appendices providing statistical information. These units flew some of the most colourful P-51s ever seen in USAAF, and the author has extensive photographic references available to allow Jim Laurier to produce profile illustrations of 30 P-51D/Ks in their finery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #236308 in Books
• Brand: Osprey Publishing
• Published on: 2006-09-26
• Released on: 2006-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Review
"Over in England, Osprey just keeps cranking out high-quality aviation books under the editorship of Tony Holmes... [This book is] in Osprey's Aviation Elite series and features the usual blend of concise text, good quality black and white photos, and numerous color profiles... The sage of the Very Long Range P-51s has been overlooked by historians... Most of the photographs have not been publishing and there are numerous good stories in the volume... recommended." -Jim Larsen, Mustangs International

"Provides a riveting combat history joining others in the 'Aviation Elite Units' series." -Library Bookwatch

"I highly recommend this title." -Fred Rick Boucher, AeroScale (September 2006)

About the Author
Carl Molesworth has specialised in producing unit histories for the USAAF fighter groups of the CBI since the 1980s, interviewing surviving veterans from these little-publicised units. The author lives in Mount Vernon, Washington, USA.

Customer Reviews

The Story of Arduous Long-Range Missions over Japan!
The P-51 and P-47 pilots who flew VLR missions to Japan in 1945 must have had cojones of steel! Imagine flying 650 miles in a single-engine fighter over the unforgiving Pacific Ocean, battling hordes of Japanese interceptors over the Homeland and then making the return trip, all the while hoping that wonderful Merlin engine upfront wouldn't miss a beat! The story of those epic - and butt-busting - missions is well told in this Osprey volume, #25 in their 'Aviation Elite Units' series.

Award-winning author Carl Molesworth chronicles the VLR missions flown by the pilots of the 15th, 21st and 506th Fighter Groups of the 7th Fighter Command starting in April 1945. The initial escort missions were fiercely opposed by IJNAF and IJAAF interceptors; later missions, less so due to the Japanese decision to conserve their resources to combat the expected U.S. invasion of the Homeland. But when the Japanese refused to come up to fight, the P-51s just went down on the deck, strafing Japanese targets at will.

By war's end, the P-51 pilots had scored 452 air and ground kills at a cost of 121 KIAs or POWs. Because of the sporadic nature of the air combat, few pilots scored the magic five kills to make ace. Nevertheless, these missions required an extraordinary physical and mental effort from the pilots involved and Molesworth's book stands as a tribute to those indomitable airmen.

As with other Osprey titles, this one is illustrated with over 100 photographs. The book benefits however from eight pages of absolutely gorgeous color side-views by Jim Laurier. Laurier's work is top-of-the-line; his artwork is so sharp you can even count the rivets.

Recommended.

Very Long Range P-51 Units of the Pacific War
This was a fine summary of the little known activities of the VLR (Very Long Range) fighter units. The difficulties encountered by the pilots and their aircraft are well described.

A typical fine, but incomplete Osprey volume.
I love the Osprey titles, and own quite a few. Often they are the only books I can find on certain subjects relative to WW2 Warbirds. This volume in one such example.

The P-51 is an icon of the air war in Europe, and fought in the CBI and Pacific as well, but these stories are not nearly as easy to find as the myriad books and articles about the ETO and MTO. This volume tells us about the P-51s that fought, for months, over Japan.

What is missing for the most part is the technical discussions that Warbird nuts live and breathe. For example, the Merlin engines of the D model Mustangs based on Iwo Jima were cleared, as far as we know, for operations with 145 octane fuel, alowing much higher manifold pressures to be obtained than any other P-51s flown by US forces. This gave them better acceleration, better climb and faster speeds at low and medium altitudes, keeping their performance advantages over contemporary A/C on both sides of the War. Combined with G-Suits and lead computing gunsights, these Mustangs were far more formidable aircraft than the P-51B models flown operationally in the ETO beginning in December 1943.

Indeed, the familiar practice of comparing late mark WW2 planes, like the F4U-4 to the 1943 Mustangs is often seen, but ultimately unfair to the P-51's operating at 80 inches of HG manifold pressure. I would have LOVED to hear some stories, seen some data about this.

Other than that, it is a fine, informative book, and highly recommended.