検索キーワード： 著者 "Tom Burkhalter" すべてのカテゴリー

By July 1, 1942, the United States has been fighting in the Pacific for nearly seven months. The Japanese advance halted west of Australia at the island of Timor, and from Timor the Japanese stage bombing raids on Darwin. In the north, the Japanese hold the former Australian possessions of New Ireland and New Britain, including the town of Rabaul in the north of New Britain. Holding Rabaul gives the Japanese possession of Simpson Harbor, a deep-water port that the Japanese turn into a formidable forward base, swarming with Zeros and antiaircraft weapons. 

Jack and Charlie Davis, along with a new companion, Jimmy Ardana, are part of the Allied effort to stop the Japanese at Port Moresby in May 1942. But the Allies have received little in the way of reinforcements, and the only fighter available to face the Japanese Zero is the difficult to handle Bell P-39. Charlie flies dangerous reconnaissance missions to determine the location of the Japanese Navy. Jack, supposedly on his way home to the States, is diverted to be a flight commander in the 8th Fighter Group at Port Moresby.

As the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy rolls south to the oil-rich Netherlands East Indies, a handful of Allied airmen and sailors stand in their way. Two brothers, Jack and Charlie Davis, pilots in the US Army Air Forces, are among that handful who face overwhelming odds to buy time for America to gear up to fight the war in the Pacific. 

In Europe, the Nazis are triumphant. England is under siege by air and sea. France has fallen to the Nazi Wehrmacht, which in turn fell on Soviet Russia. The Red Army is in full retreat, with the Nazis at the gates of Moscow. In the Pacific, Japan has been at war with China since 1937. Her war industries depend upon imports of scrap metal and oil from the Allied nations. When an embargo is placed on imports to Japan, they are left with a year's supply of oil to supply their armed forces.

These stories span over 30 years of writing time. In themselves, they each represent that struggle that goes on inside a writer to bring something out of the inchoate darkness within the subconscious, and shove it out into the light for all to see who care to look. Now I’m sending these strange children out into the world to see what others might make of them. Perhaps it’s presumptuous of me to tell you a little about their genesis, but putting one word after another is what I do, and besides, I’m saying goodbye. These stories will never be quite all mine again.