Under the Southern Cross – The South Pacific Air Campaign against Rabaul, Thomas McKelvey Cleaver.
Looks at the Allied air campaign that helped neutralise the major Japanese base at Rabaul without a costly invasion, tracing the growth of Allied air power in the South Pacific from the desperate days on Guadalcanal to a position where the Allies had clear air superiority and were able to subject Rabaul to weeks of near constant attack, eventually forcing the Japanese to withdraw their last aircraft from the base, but not until they had attempted to use their elite carrier aviators to defeat the Allied attacks, thus reducing the effectiveness of their aircraft carriers for the rest of the war
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