Although Osprey published one of its campaign books (No. 263) in 2014 on the Japanese taking Hong Kong right after their attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the campaign detailed in this book remains a little-known part of the Pacific war, less so regarding the often-intense Pacific Air War. However, this heavily detailed, somewhat over-long book is crammed with information of the Japanese takeover of the British colony and other British subjects, and the imprisonment of many foreign nationals, including Americans, who were later released and repatriated. It takes a while to get to U.S. Navy plans for operations against the Japanese to retake Hong Kong, but the overall story is worth the time. There are lists of acronyms, place names and three well-drawn area maps that complement the single folio of photos, as well as endnotes and an index that help the reader.
The detailed account in Chapter 8 of Japanese convoy Hi-87 describes a new enemy fleet as it headed toward U.S. naval forces in the South China Sea. U.S. Army Air Force’s P-51s took reconnaissance photos of targets around Hong Kong as Adm. William F. Halsey’s Task Force (TF) 38 prepared to meet it. The American preparation takes a while to read but includes early P-51Bs in action in the Pacific. They and later Mustang models had already met the German Luftwaffe escorting increasing numbers of USAAF B-17s and B-24s over Europe.
U.S. Navy attacks on long-held Kong Hong kept up the pressure and eventually helped relieve the three-and-a-half years of increasing but almost constant battles between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. And by this time, we are not even halfway through the book.
Finally, Chapter 13 describes concerted attacks by U.S. Navy squadrons beginning on the island fortress that Hong Kong had become since 1941. Chapter 14 is one of the best descriptions of an intense and perhaps unsuccessful campaign over Hong Kong and surrounding enemy installations that American crews experienced against Japanese flak and defending fighters.
Halsey’s TF-38 contained a squadron of Hellcats (now fighter bombers) that swarmed outlying airfields and Hong Kong itself in daily efforts to wrest the British and Chinese territory from four years of Japanese rule.
In a way I have never seen, once it gets rolling, the book places the reader right into the daily routine of a carrier air group in World War II: the constant missions with all the exhilaration, dangers and thrills against a determined enemy—an enemy still bent on meeting opponents in combat, still determined to bear the place he has carved out for himself in the world and hold the territories that are now his. I say that without admiration because of the blood and people now under an enemy’s dominion. The author has deeply researched and described how Navy squadrons and crews met their enemy in daily combat, which is difficult to accomplish.
Bailey’s book has one great fault though, namely, the detailing of every day’s activity, strike and loss of every aircraft, Hellcat, Helldiver, Avenger and aircrew, to a degree I have never seen before, or in any account I have written myself. While I have noted the research is definitely fine, it sometimes seems to assume the identity of wanting to pad the text, if only to impress the reader and perhaps potential reviewers.
Chapter 27 and subsequent chapters have surprisingly lengthy stories of how several U.S. Navy pilots and their crewmen met their end or their time as PoWs at the hands of vindictive Japanese captors while attacking Hong Kong facilities and surrounding fields that often contained long-held European and American prisoners unable to escape the 1941 takeover. A few examples would certainly get the point across, but not eight chapters and 69 pages.
The book’s final chapters detail the unusual activities to post-Japanese surrender (August 1945), including payments for various claims for damages from U.S. Navy attacks on different properties, as well as the unusual roundup and repatriation of long-held British and U.S. Navy PoWs, or how their remains were found after the surrender in August and September 1945. Another unusual ending to such a highly detailed account of these war years.
I cannot think of a more unusually written book on such an unknown campaign that actually lasted the length of the Pacific war itself.
