The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise
by Edward Peary Stafford
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A lasting memorial to the USS Enterprise, this classic tale of the carrier that contributed more than any other single warship to the naval victory in the Pacific has remained a favorite World War II story for more than twenty-five years. The Big E participated in nearly every major engagement of the war against Japan and earned a total of twenty battle stars. The Halsey-Doolittle Raid; the Battles of Midway, Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal, the Philippine Sea, and Leyte Gulf; and the invasions of show more Iwo Jima and Okinawa are all faithfully recorded from the viewpoint of the men who served her so well. The author, a naval aviator, focuses on the exploits of the famous ship's air groups, capturing the reality of their encounters and provoking a range of emotions from readers. This superb study of a great ship, her crew, and the action they saw has been called one of the finest pieces of naval writing to emerge from the war. What it is like inside the cockpit of a Dauntless dive bomber as it bores in on its target or the effort required to unstick the ship's huge rudder when damaged by a bomb are just two of the nuggets Edward Stafford mined from the mountain of research and lengthy interviews he conducted to write the book. Literate and scholarly as well as highly dramatic, the book will appeal to historians and the general public alike. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
A competent combat history of one of the first ships built completely as an aircraft carrier that figured largely in the evolution of carrier warfare in WWII. The prose is unexceptional, but there's a good deal of detail about the air war in the Solomons.
An excellent account of the most decorated US Navy warship to emerge from World War II. A must read for anyone interested in the Pacific War. Following the Japanese surge across the Pacific in 1941 the Enterprise was part of every significant US operation except the Battle of the Coral Sea from Dec 1941 through the conquest of Guadalcanal. The details of some of the later carrier actions seem light in comparison to the extensive accounts of the ship's battles in the Solomon Islands, but in the early battles the Enterprise was often operating with only 1 or 2 other carriers instead of the powerful Task Force 38/58 of the later war years.
Good story of probably the most famous US Navy ship of World War 2. It is a bit dated in information we now have about the war and Enterprise operations in it.
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7 Works 346 Members
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise
- Original publication date
- 1962
- People/Characters
- John Crommelin; Killer Kane; Bill Martin; Wade McClusky; Butch O'Hare; Dusty Rhodes
- Important places
- Pearl Harbor, O'ahu, Hawai'i, USA; Midway Atoll; North Pacific Ocean; Pacific Ocean
- Important events
- World War II (1939 | 1945); World War II, Pacific Theater (1941-12-07 | 1945-09-02)
- Related movies
- Battle 360 (2008 | IMDb)
- First words
- In Europe the Second World War was in its third year, but two oceans and a continent to the westward, on the sunny tips of the mid-Pacific mountains, the long habit of peace remained unbroken.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Early in 1961 the dock was flooded and Enterprise, the first nuclear powered carrier in history, the biggest ship in the world, again the pride of her country and its Navy, first felt the touch of the sea. The story of the Big E had begun again.
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Statistics
- Members
- 171
- Popularity
- 190,907
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 7
