First Shot: The Untold Story of the Japanese Minisubs That Attacked Pearl Harbor

by John Craddock

Overview

"If we had only known even a bit of what John Craddock tells us now, our own history could have been so very different."
—Sherry Sontag, coauthor of Blind Man’s Bluff

In First Shot, John Craddock investigates a little-known but clear eleventh-hour warning that, had it been heeded, might have enabled the Navy’s Pearl Harbor command to blunt the Japanese assault and save ships and lives. Craddock reveals that the attack plan of Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto included five midget submarines, each carrying two men and two torpedoes. First Shot vividly recreates the action on the deck of the U.S.S. Ward on the morning of December 7 as the outmoded relic of an earlier war engaged a tiny, state-of-the-art undersea fighting machine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780071479110
Publisher:	McGraw Hill LLC
Publication date:	10/04/2006
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

John Craddock, an author of several books and ajournalist, helped launch a series of guidebooks for The History Channel.

Table of Contents

Prologue

1
The Samurai’s Son

2
The Smallest Subs

3
The First Shot

4
The First Prisoner of War

5
Deadly Distractions and the Battle of Midway

6
The Assassination

7
The Suicide Squads

8
The War without End

9
The Puzzle

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Index