Tidal Wave ― From Leyte Gulf to Tokyo Bay

Now publishing in paperback, this is vivid narrative history of the final stages of the Pacific War, as the US Navy began to slowly approach the Japanese Home Islands against fearsome opposition from new and terrifying sources, notably the suicidal Japanese airmen: the kamikaze.

The United States Navy won such overwhelming victories in 1944 that, had the navy faced a different enemy, the war would have been over at the conclusion of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

However, in the moment of victory on October 25, 1944, the US Navy found itself confronting a frightening enemy that had been unimaginable until it appeared. The kamikaze, “divine wind” in Japanese, was something Americans were totally unprepared for--a shocking violation of every belief held in the West. The attacks were terrifying. Regardless of the damage inflicted on an attacking airplane, there was no certainty of safety aboard the ship until that airplane was completely destroyed, as the crew of the USS St. Lo tragically learned.

From best-selling author Thomas McKelvey Cleaver, Tidal Wave combines expert research and first-person accounts to tell the story of the naval campaigns in the Pacific from the victory at Leyte Gulf to the end of the war--a period in which the US Navy would fight harder for survival than ever before.

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver is the author of the well-received and best-selling Fabled Fifteen: The Pacific War Saga of Carrier Air Group 15, a history of the US Navy's top-scoring carrier air group in World War II, published by Casemate. He is additionally the author of F4F and F6F Aces of VF-2 published by Osprey, and also the author of Pacific Thunder, a history of the first year of the fast carrier offensive in the Pacific War, was published by Osprey in 2017. He lives in Encino, California, USA.