In the Hands of Fate: The Story of Patrol Wing Ten: 8 December 1941 - 11 May 1942. This item is unavailable.In the Hands of Fate: The Story of Patrol Wing Ten: 8 December 1941 - 11 May 1942

Patrol Wing Ten was the only U.S. Navy aviation unit to fight the Japanese in the early weeks of World War II, and the daring exploits of its PBY scout-plane pilots offer a dramatic tale of heroism, duty, and controversy - and humor. It is filled with the daring exploits of the PBY scout-plane pilots who took on an enemy that outnumbered them nearly 1000 to one. Poorly equipped and dead tired from flying back-to-back patrols with no fighter cover, the men lost sixty-six percent of their aircraft in just eight weeks. They fought a courageous battle, however, and this forceful narrative places the reader right in the midst of some of the fiercest fighting. Author Dwight Messimer's aggressive research on the topic has resulted in a work that is at once entertaining and informative. Using a style that made his earlier books so successful, he describes in moving detail the desperate but valiant acts of men obliged to engage in a hopeless fight against the seemingly invincible Japanese juggernaut that swept across the southwest Pacific at the opening of the war. By Christmas Day in 1941, Patrol Wing Ten was forced to split into two groups, one fighting an air and sea campaign in Java, the other fighting as infantry on Bataan and Corregidor. Moving back and forth between the two groups, Messimer skillfully interweaves their experiences with the major events of the overall war. To bring the story alive, he uses fresh material from the fifty survivors he managed to track down and deftly captures their ability to maintain a sense of humor in the face of overwhelming danger. The more than one hundred personal and official documents uncovered during several years of research have revealed new facts, especially about technical points about the planes. These facts may raise some eyebrows since they disagree with popularly accepted ideas, facts verified by the PBY crews. This is their story, the fullest account yet written of these largely unheralded men.