Hell is Upon Us, D-Day in the Pacific, June-August 1944 By Victor Brooks (354 pages, photos, maps) Reviewer:  Capt. Robert N. Adrian, USN (Ret.) Overall Rating: Four Stars. Highly recommended. An excellent book. The author has created, through extensive research and skillful writing, a classic historical account of the most ambitious Pacific Amphibious Operation of WWII—the invasion of the Mariana Group, and the capture of the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, under the command of Admiral Raymond Spruance. It includes comprehensive coverage of the largest carrier battle in history, the Battle of the Philippine Sea, often referred to as “The Great Mariana Turkey Shoot”. With D-Day of June 14, 1944 at Saipan, a little more than a week after the D-Day Invasion of Normandy, another mighty flotilla of 800 ships, carrying 162,000 men, was geared to smashing into the most important Japanese base in the mid-Pacific. In the first nine chapters of the author’s treatise, he provides an encyclopedic coverage of the Pacific War after Pearl Harbor, and sets the stage for the Mariana Campaign. Then, from his extensive research of the campaign, he provides a blow by blow accounting of all actions from both sides, and includes the names of individual American and Japanese officers in command, their battle strategies and final results. He also includes a description of the topography of each of the battlefields, and its advantages and disadvantages to both sides. He makes clever comparisons of some of these actions with others in our history (i.e. Tarawa vs Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg and Admiral Spruance’s protection of the Mariana Campaign Support Ships vs McClellan’s protection of Lincoln’s Headquarters in his battle for Richmond). It was expected that the Japanese would oppose the Mariana Operations, and they certainly did. Our submarines in the Western Philippine Seas reported what the Japanese considered to be an unbeatable fleet on a sortie into the Philippine Sea, under the Command of ADM Ozowa. The Japanese fleet included nine aircraft carriers with 430 combat planes, 50 Scout planes, 600 planes available in shore stations, two of the largest battleships in the world, Yamato & Musashi, whose 19” salvoes could deliver 50,000 pounds of high explosives in one salvo, 16 cruisers and 27 DDs. Now, Admiral Spruance orchestrated the strategy to annihilate this advancing Japanese Fleet and turned over that responsibility to his two 5th Fleet Commanders, Marc Mitscher and Willis Lee. The battle that followed, mostly in the air, tallied a kill ratio of 10 Japanese aircraft for each American aircraft lost, and resulted in the loss of three of the primary Japanese carriers. This significant loss of irreplaceable Flat Tops and flyers removed Japan from any further carrier operation capability for the remainder of WWII, and left the Japanese with only one card to play at Leyte Gulf, during the upcoming autumn. (See James D. Hornfischer’s “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors”). In the meantime, the battle for the three islands continued until the last island of Guam was declared secured on August 9, 1944. The Japanese now knew that the Americans had the bases within range of the Japanese home islands to launch a massive aerial bombardment with their new super flying fortresses, the B-29s. Emperor Hirohito of Japan was so upset by the loss of the Marianas that he fired his infamous Premier Tojo, and several of his other leading Military rankings, in his search for new leadership to save his Empire. This successful three-month campaign, now gave the US Military a clear path to victory.