St. Martin's Press

Lightning Strike

by  Donald A. Davis

Reviewed By  D.M. Knights, IPMS# 17656

ISBN: 0312309066 Fornat: 400 pages Lightning Strike is a book on the oft-told story of the mission to shoot down the plane carrying Admiral Isokoru Yamamoto while he was on an inspection tour of front line bases. That mission has been the subject of much controversy over the years as each of the pilots of the "killer flight" that survived the mission told a vastly different story of what occurred. The book begins with the story of how each of the pilots who was to play a major role in the mission ended up in the U.S. Army Air Corps. The four main individuals involved in the story are Tom Lamphier, Jr., Besby Holmes, Rex Barber and John Mitchell. Lamphier, Holmes and Barber were three of the four members of the "killer flight", the aircraft on the mission that were specifically assigned to shoot down the bombers carrying Admiral Yamamoto and his staff. John Mitchell was the man who was in command of the planning of the mission. Mitchell also led the overall mission and lead the top cover aircraft that provided protection for the "killer flight". Next, the book provides that reader with a background on the life of the target of the mission, Admiral Yamamoto. The author rightly points out the many ironies of Admiral Yamamoto's life. He spent a lot of his career in the Untied States. He was a great admirer of the United States and developed a liking for many western things, including poker. Yamamoto worked very hard to oppose Japan going to war with the United States. He did not believe that Japan could win such a war. The main portion of the book is the story of the mission flown by P-38s from Guadalcanal to shoot down the bombers carrying Admiral Yamamoto and his staff as they were touring front line bases. The author relates the different versions of the mission that each pilot gave on his return from the mission. Those stories varied drastically from each other. They also each varied drastically from the known facts in that each of the surviving pilots of the killer flight claimed to have shot down one or more of the escorting Zero fighters. However, we know from Japanese records that none of the escorting fighters were in fact shot down. Subsequent to the mission there eventual rancor among the pilots involved. Tom Lamphier, Jr. claimed sole credit for shooting down the Betty bomber carrying Admiral Yamamoto. The U.S. Army Air Corps and eventually the U.S. Air Force backed this claim in their official history for many years. The author points out that Lamphier was the son of a World War I pilot who was on the Pentagon staff during the Second World War. Lamphier was, through his father, acquainted with many high ranking U.S. generals. The author implies that one of the main reasons that the U.S. Army Air Corps gave the credit to Lamphier in the first place and subsequently supported his version of events for so long was the connections Lamphier had inside the military establishment. Eventually the U.S. Air Force altered their records to give both Lamphier and Barber shared credit for the downing of the Betty bomber carrying Yamamoto. Davis seems to believe, as many current historians do, that Barber alone destroyed Yamamoto's aircraft. Even at 400 pages, the book was a quick read and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Yamamoto mission. I did come away a little sad that the fine accomplishment of the people involved in the mission degenerated into so much subsequent bitterness. For more information regarding the Yamamoto mission and the subsequent movement to give Rex Barber sole credit for the Yamamoto bomber kill, visit the website of the Second Yamamoto Mission Association (www.syma.org).

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