Shinano!: The Sinking of Japan's Secret Supership

Recounts how the Shinano was secretly converted to an aircraft carrier, but was sunk by an American submarine before it could fire a single shot

Shinano was the largest warship in history to be sunk by a submarine, and Enright was the skipper of the sub that sank it. This firsthand account, based on Enright's recollections and statements by American and Japanese veterans of the action, can be recommended without hesitation as a WW II naval classic. While the basic story is simple, its unfolding is as complexly gripping as a chess match between grandmasters. The opponents: Commander Enright and his counterpart, Capt. Toshio Abe, commander of Shinano. On November 29, 1944, the aircraft carrier, escorted by three destroyers, was only 17 hours into its maiden voyage when four perfectly placed torpedoes, launched by Enright's Archer-Fish, sent it to the bottom near the entrance to Tokyo Bay. The meticulously unfolding narrative, told alternately from the points of view of the plotting-room and periscope of Archer-Fish and the captain's bridge aboard Shinano, is mainly concerned with Enright's struggle to gain position ahead of the zigzagging carrier and maneuver into an elusive firing-window that would be open only for a few seconds. Coauthor Ryan's previous books include Who Killed the Red Baron? Photos. Military Book Club main selection.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Enright was captain of USS Archer-Fish when it torpedoed Shinano in November 1944. Both his first-person account of the operation and his candid analysis of his development as a submarine commander will be particularly interesting to naval buffs. The U.S. perspective is balanced by a reconstruction of Shinano 's first and last vogage from accounts by Japanese survivors. The work would have benefited from an opening chapter placing the operation in the context of the Pacific War. It also tarnishes Enright's achievement by exaggeration. Shinano may have been the largest aircraft carrier of World War II; it was not a "supership," or even an attack carrier. It was intended to operate as a support ship for fleet operations. This does not diminish the U.S. triumph. Military Book Club main selection.Dennis E. Showalter, History Dept., Colorado Coll., Colorado Springs
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.