BLUE LIKE STEEL - US Navy Carrier Fighters in the Pacific.

When Japan's surrender was signed in Tokyo Bay in September 1945, the strength of the American carrier fighter force had been multiplied more than fiftyfold in the space of four years!

Relegated to their tiny escort carriers, the F4F Wildcats, in the meantime improved and redesignated FM-2, still appeared on the Navy's rolls. But the latter had nevertheless largely provided for their replacement with two exceptional models that entered active service successively in 1943: the Vought F4U Corsair and the Grumman F6F Hellcat — robust, powerful and enduring machines. Faster, better armed and far more versatile than the F4F, they would pose an insurmountable problem for a Japanese air arm already battered at Midway and Guadalcanal by Grumman's modest "barrel".

From the Coral Sea to Mount Suribachi, four years of aerial combat are traced here through the history of the three principal aircraft that equipped American carrier-based fighters in the Pacific. Alongside John Thach and Marion Carl, we see how the F4F stood up to the Japanese onslaught in 1942–1943, before it was gradually pushed back and then definitively halted by the combined action of the F4U and F6F, flown by fascinating men such as Gregory "Pappy" Boyington and Dave McCampbell.

Together, these machines formed the « steel blue » cutting edge of an air arm that was lethal to its adversaries — the soldiers, sailors and airmen serving under the banner of the Rising Sun.