Having finally gotten around to reading this book after it's been bouncing around assorted TBR lists for five or six years, I'm left with the following reactions.

One, this is very much a general history of the British Pacific Fleet in total, in that David Hobbs devotes as much time to logistics and support as he does to combat operations. Not to mention he covers the whole period from 1944, when the BPF was a gleam in London's eye, to its phase out in 1948. What leaves one most impressed is the performance of Admiral Bruce Fraser and the efforts of his staff to create a meaningful force to uphold British interests in the face of Washington's often tepid response, and at a time when British resources were rather threadbare.

That's the thing, this whole enterprise was rather on the knife-edge of practicality for most of its wartime existence. Yes, the whole adventure is a tribute to British pluck and improvisation (with a lot of help from friends), but the more cynical might see this mostly as an exercise in grandstanding by a fast-fading imperial power desperately trying to maintain its relevance. It turns out that on the days of maximum effort off Okinawa things could have gone rather badly for the BPF. On one hand, the carrier "Formidable" took a serious "kamikaze" hit on her much vaunted armored flight deck that delivered serious internal damage (which sent her to the dockyard), while, on the other, the carrier "Illustrious" suffered an "own goal" in the form of an accident that caused a major hanger fire that decimated her aircraft on hand, and had the potential to really threaten the survival of the ship. One can imagine Okinawa turning into a seagoing equivalent of the "Market-Garden" fiasco.

Still, the BPF was lucky as well as good, and Hobbs does a convincing job of arguing that the operational experience gained in 1945 set the tone for the Royal Navy for the duration of the Cold War. This book also certainly represents an upgrade over John Winton's "The Forgotten Fleet."

Considering that this book is a rather dry exercise in quasi-official history, the reader might want to first hunt down Norman Hanson's "Carrier Pilot" from 1979, to get a more personal take on the whole business. ( )

An outstanding and hard-to-put-down history of the British Pacific Fleet, the Royal Navy's most powerful Strike Force - 1945 and, with the end of the war in August 1945, much reduced in the immediate post-war years. A high point for naval aviation and carrier-borne aircraft, it played a significant - if relatively small overall, in the great scheme of things - role in the final stages of the Second World War in the Pacific, under overall US Navy command. Its success owes much to one man, its popular Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser (Lord Fraser of North Cape (1888-1981)). I am proud to have followed in the footsteps of my father, Able Seaman (Leading Torpedo Operator) Walter May, who served in the destroyer HMS Wager, with the BPF in 1945 - AB (LTO) W May (1906-1982). ( )

Mr. Hobbs has created the best history of this force so far. It clearly lays out the differences between the USN and the RN, and shows the improvement for carrier-based warfare the RN was capable of versus the Japanese in the Pacific in 1945. There is a lot of photography, and the appendices are frequently useful. another area where it shows to advantage is the amount of material that covers the immediate post-war period, detailing the gradual run-down of the BPF. Some chapters also cover the social effects of the war on the navy and the difficulties of dealing with POWs and of course the inevitable war brides. A worthy book for any well-rounded naval library. ( )