The Fleet the Gods Forgot; The U.S. Asiatic Fleet in World War II

Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [14], 327, [1] pages. Illustrations. Endpaper maps. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Minor edge soiling. Walter G. Winslow was a naval aviator who began his career in the U.S. Navy in 1938. In September 1941 he joined the heavy cruiser USS Houston, flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. He saw action in all the fleet's battles until the ship was sunk at the Battle of Sunda Strait in 1942. Picked up in the Java Sea by the Japanese, Captain Winslow spent three and a half years as a prisoner-of-war. He retired from the Navy in 1958 and worked in the aerospace industry. The dramatic tale of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet in World War II received little attention prior to the publication of this book, when Winslow chronicled their short and tragic story of heroism and defeat. Greatly outnumbered by vastly superior forces. Within a matter of three months, the beleaguered ships were totally wiped out. Captain Walter Winslow was in a unique position to tell the riveting story. As an active participant in all the major battles the fleet engaged in, he had an intimate understanding of the calamities that befell it. In addition, he drew upon the his own extensive notes he kept from a POW camp while interviewing other American, British, Dutch, and Australian prisoners from the Allied fleet. Winslow also painstakingly tracked down war documents and battle reports from all the ships assigned to the fleet to paint a complete picture filled with graphic details of the fleet's only victory at Balikpapan; the disastrous Battle of the Java Sea that broke the back of the combined Asiatic fleet; the ghastly spectacle at Sunda Strait where the Houston struggled to survive; the suspenseful episode in the submarine Perch trapped in the mud at the bottom of the sea; and the daring escape from Corregidor of eighteen crew members from the USS Quail who refused to surrender to the Japanese forces.