Down to the Sea

An Epic Story of Naval Disaster and Heroism in World War II

By: Bruce Henderson

Narrated by: Jon Waters

This epic story opens at the hour the Greatest Generation went to war on December 7, 1941, and follows four US Navy ships and their crews in the Pacific until their day of reckoning three years later with a far different enemy: a deadly typhoon.

In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms, placing the mighty US Third Fleet in harm's way. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, as well as many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson finds some of the story's truest heroes exhibiting selflessness, courage, and even defiance.

©2007 Bruce Henderson (P)2022 Tantor

very factual, good personal stories

very good story that draws you into the joys and hardships of the Navy. very factual and the writer did excellent research. A few narration mistakes and mispronounciation of words, but otherwise fantastic.

Too many mispronunciations.

locations, Navy terms, just too many pronunciations. OOD, Officer of the Dock? Names of Pacific Islands.

Unfocused

Ostensibly proclaimed on the cover of the text to be a story of the 3rd fleet against the forces of nature, the entire first half of the book is more a disjointed biography of the ships sunk and their crews than a Greek tragedy. In fact other than the first introduction describing the loss of the USS Spence and the history of the last captain of the USS Hull, one could skip the entire first half of the book and not have materially missed much in the way of understanding the long chain of events from destroyer upgrades and ship environments to the final typhoon itself. The biographies of the characters, while meant to put a human face on the tragedy, become a slog and feel like filler. Moreover, the sheer scale of the damage to 3rd fleet is missed entirely :A fire on a carrier, the drama of other damage control, the possible impact to military effectiveness are totally lacking in any depth. The introduction of characters not as interwoven into the tale of each ship as time passes, evidence a lack of deftness and brevity that makes narrative history workable, interesting and memorable. Many that are introduced feel like they vanish, almost as if forgotten by the book just like the ships loss became glossed over by the board of inquiry. Ultimately, either through a poor concept of historical writing or poor editing, this isn't a book I'd recommend much money or a credit on. Pick it up at a used book store or garage sale, sure, but there are definitely better titles which combine narrative, vignette and historical events far more effectively.